With capital punishment, Mr. Newsom is not at the vanguard of the opposition movement. The death penalty has been on the decline in America for two decades. But it has become a defining issue for him, widening the dividing line between California and the policies of President Trump, who has spoken out in favor of the death penalty, even for drug dealers. After the news of Mr. Newsom’s decision broke, Mr. Trump said on Twitter: “Defying voters, the Governor of California will halt all death penalty executions of 737 stone cold killers. Friends and families of the always forgotten VICTIMS are not thrilled, and neither am I!” Speaking several hours later, Mr. Newsom said he had met with families of victims and they had expressed passionate but conflicting views on capital punishment. But the governor made it clear that his decision came down to his own conscience, prodded by impending decisions such as whether to support the state’s lethal injection protocol. An executive order Mr. Newsom signed on Wednesday does three things: grants reprieves to the inmates currently on death row — they will still be under a death sentence, but not at risk of execution; closes the execution chamber at San Quentin prison; and withdraws the state’s lethal injection protocol, the formally approved procedure for carrying out executions. “Three out of four nations in the world know better and are doing better,” Mr. Newsom said. “They’ve abolished the death penalty. It’s time California join those ranks.” Supporters of the death penalty predicted legal challenges to any moratorium. Michele Hanisee, the president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys in Los Angeles said that reprieves for condemned inmates would be, “in effect, invalidating the law” that California voters have repeatedly affirmed, despite the liberal values that dominate the state. “I think it surprises me too, sometimes,” she said. “California is liberal, I think we all know that. We have Hollywood, and the music industry, which I think affects people’s thinking. I think with the death penalty it comes down to specifics of cases. We have serial killers and lots of bad people in California.”<doc-sep>Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign an executive order on Wednesday to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in California, vowing that no prisoner in the state will be executed while he is in office because of a belief that capital punishment is discriminatory, unjust and “inconsistent with our bedrock values.” The order will prevent the state from putting prisoners to death by granting temporary reprieves to all 737 condemned inmates on California’s death row, the largest in the nation. It will immediately close the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison and scuttle the state’s ongoing efforts to devise a constitutional method for lethal injection. No inmate will be released and no sentence or conviction will be altered, the order says. Newsom joins governors in Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania who have imposed moratoriums on executions in those states, all using executive powers. The action runs counter to the expressed will of California voters, who over the last six years rejected two statewide ballot measures to repeal the death penalty and favored fast-tracking the appeals process. Advertisement “Our death penalty system has been — by any measure — a failure,” Newsom says in prepared remarks he is expected to deliver at a Capitol news conference Wednesday morning. “It has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or can’t afford expensive legal representation. It has provided no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent. It has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars.” Newsom also argues in his remarks that the criminal justice system is susceptible to error, citing a November Los Angeles Times editorial that reported 164 condemned prisoners nationwide who were wrongly convicted have been freed from death row since 1973. He also cites a 2005 Santa Clara University Law Review study that concluded people convicted of killing whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than people convicted of killing blacks and Latinos. The executive order is likely to trigger legal challenges by pro-death penalty organizations and county prosecutors who have been forceful advocates for capital punishment in California. In February, the association representing deputy district attorneys in Los Angeles County accused California’s elected officials of foot-dragging on enforcing the death penalty because they “smugly substitute their own values over the ratified votes of the majority.” Time served by the 24 inmates who have exhausted all appeals (Los Angeles Times) Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, called Newsom’s actions “an abuse of power.” Although Newsom has the constitutional authority to grant reprieves to condemned inmates, he does not have the power to order the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to shutter the death chamber or halt efforts to establish a lethal injection protocol, Scheidegger said. California law requires corrections officials to maintain the ability to carry out executions, he added. “He’s following in the footsteps of other governors who abused this power because they were frustrated by a law that they just personally disagreed with,” Scheidegger said. The moratorium is just the latest of Newsom’s efforts to deliver on the bold, liberal agenda that defined his successful 2018 gubernatorial campaign and helped him emerge as one of President Trump’s main political foils. Advertisement On his first day in office, the former lieutenant governor and San Francisco mayor outlined a dramatic Medi-Cal expansion that would cover young immigrant adults who are in the U.S. illegally and later promised a major expansion of paid family leave in California. Newsom’s first proposed budget included a $1-billion “working families tax credit,” more than double the size of the state’s existing tax break for low-income workers, and set aside $500 million to help local governments build shelters and add services to help the homeless. California has not executed a prisoner since 2006 because of a series of legal challenges to its method of lethal injection. But Newsom said he believed those court cases would be resolved while he was in office, clearing the way for executions to resume. The governor promised to be as “proactive” on the death penalty as he was on the issue of gay marriage, when, as mayor of San Francisco, he ordered the city to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2004, a catalyst in a legal battle that ended when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of LGBTQ people to marry in 2015. With 24 inmates on death row who have exhausted their appeals, Newsom in February said he feared California could potentially execute “more prisoners than any other state in modern history” if no action was taken. California has executed 13 people since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. During that same time, 79 death row inmates have died of natural causes and 26 have died by suicide, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Advertisement “I do not believe that a civilized society can claim to be a leader in the world as long as its government continues to sanction the premeditated and discriminatory execution of its people,” Newsom says in his prepared remarks. “In short, the death penalty is inconsistent with our bedrock values and strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a Californian.” Though the death penalty never emerged as a major issue in the 2018 governor’s race, Newsom has been outspoken about his opposition to capital punishment. The governor endorsed failed ballot measures in 2012 and 2016 that would have abolished the death penalty in California. Newsom also opposed a separate statewide ballot measure in 2016, Proposition 66, to accelerate the appeals process in capital cases, which California voters narrowly approved. Shortly after his election in November, Newsom directed his legal advisors to assess his options as California’s chief executive, which include the constitutional power to commute death sentences and issue temporary reprieves. To impose a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in California, Newsom will grant reprieves to all death row inmates that will stay in place throughout his time as governor. But the reprieves will expire as soon as Newsom leaves office, pushing the life-and-death decisions to his successor. Advertisement Newsom also has authority to commute sentences to life in prison for condemned inmates convicted of a single felony. But the governor cannot commute the sentences of prisoners convicted of two separate felonies — a population that includes more than half the inmates on death row — without the approval of the California Supreme Court. The court rejected 10 commutations handed out by Gov. Jerry Brown in his last full month in office — all of which involved people convicted of multiple felonies — and did not provide an explanation for the action. It was the first time in decades that California’s top court rejected a governor’s commutations, which should serve as a warning to Newsom, Scheidegger said. Scheidegger’s organization was one of the main proponents of the successful 2016 ballot measure to fast-track executions in California, which passed by a margin of just 2 percentage points. In that same election, a competing ballot measure to repeal the death penalty and commute sentences to life in prison, Proposition 62, failed by just over 6 percentage points. Advertisement Newsom first signaled his possible intentions regarding the death penalty in February when he signed an executive order for new DNA tests in the quadruple-murder case of death row inmate Kevin Cooper, who was sentenced to death in 1985 after he was convicted of killing Doug and Peggy Ryen and their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, as well 11-year-old Christopher Hughes, who was unrelated to the family. They were found stabbed to death in a Chino Hills home. Newsom’s executive order came after Cooper’s attorneys alleged that key pieces of evidence were not properly tested and needed to be analyzed with modern technology. “Especially in cases where the government seeks to impose the ultimate punishment of death, I need to be satisfied that all relevant evidence is carefully and fairly examined,” Newsom said. Death sentences plummet across California. Riverside County, which led the U.S. in 2017, has had zero this year » Advertisement phil.willon@latimes.com Twitter: @philwillon<doc-sep>"I do not believe that a civilised society can claim to be a leader in the world as long as its government continues to sanction the premeditated and discriminatory execution of its people," he said in a statement issued with the executive order.<doc-sep>
SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday halted the death penalty, saying he was deeply troubled by the possibility of executing an innocent person even though California voters have repeatedly backed capital punishment. Robert Galvan, who is on death row for murder, exercises at the Adjustment Center yard during a media tour of California's Death Row at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, California December 29, 2015. Picture taken December 29, 2015. REUTERS/Stephen Lam Newsom was convinced by statistics suggesting that perhaps dozens of the 737 inmates on the state’s death row were innocent. The state has not held an execution since 2006 but appeared to be moving toward resuming them. “I couldn’t sleep at night,” Newsom said at the state capitol, adding later, “Do we have the right to kill? I don’t believe we do.” In signing an executive order that grants reprieve to death row inmates and closes the state’s execution chamber, Newsom waded into treacherous political territory. Despite California’s liberal reputation and growing unease with the death penalty, voters have repeatedly repudiated efforts to abolish it. As recently as 2016, a measure to abolish the death penalty failed, and another, aimed at speeding up executions, passed. Republicans condemned the action on Wednesday, saying Newsom’s action was an offense to the families of victims of gruesome crimes. Shawn Steele, a California representative on the Republican National Committee, said the GOP would likely use the moratorium in upcoming campaigns against Newsom and other Democrats. “He’s putting his party in a bad spot,” Steele said. Flanked by Democratic party leaders, Newsom said he decided to take the move because of steps by the state toward resuming executions. No death row inmates will be released under the order. Slideshow ( 4 images ) Newsom said he had anticipated that within a month he would have been asked to sign off on a new protocol for administering lethal injections to death row inmates, clearing the way for executions to begin again. In addition, he said, 25 of the state’s death row inmates had exhausted all of their appeals, meaning they would be in line for execution. California’s death row is crowded with inmates, many of whom have been there for decades. ‘MORAL LEADERSHIP’ Ellen Kreitzberg, a death penalty expert and opponent at Santa Clara University law school in California, welcomed Newsom’s move. “The moral leadership the governor is showing puts us in line with other countries and other states in terms of abolishing the death penalty,” she said. Newsom does not have the power to overturn California’s death penalty law, Kreitzberg said, but he can refuse to sign any death warrants and can commute death sentences to life imprisonment. On the campaign trail just last year, Newsom said he would respect the voters’ will with regard to the death penalty. But on Wednesday he said that abstract idea faded as he was personally faced with the possibility of signing death warrants. He pointed to recent successful efforts to free inmates who were wrongly convicted, saying that roughly one in 25 felons are later found to be innocent. With 737 inmates on death row, that equates to a possible 30 who are innocent, he said. Of the 25 who have exhausted their appeals, one could be innocent, he said. “There could very well be a backlash,” said State Senator Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Berkeley who supports Newsom’s move. “But I think that even people who support the death penalty don’t want us to execute an innocent person.” California has not put an inmate to death since 2006, amid legal challenges to its execution protocols and discomfort among political leaders. But prisoners convicted of murder continue to be sentenced to death in local courtrooms.