Anti-death penalty activists applauded California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s planned executive order announcing a moratorium on capital punishment in the state on Wednesday.
The order will grant reprieve to 737 death row inmates, a quarter of all prisoners awaiting execution in the United States. California’s prison system has the largest death row population in the Western Hemisphere.
Newsom, in his prepared remarks, called the death penalty “inconsistent with our bedrock values” and noted that 164 inmates — including five in California — have been released from death row over the past 45 years after being exonerated of their convictions.
The governor is expected to outline the long history of discrimination within the criminal justice system, making mentally ill, black, brown, and poor convicts more likely to face the death penalty.
“Our death penalty system has been — by any measure — a failure,” the remarks state.“The intentional killing of another person is wrong. And as governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual.”
🚨🚨🚨Breathtaking news. “Gov. Gavin Newsom is suspending the death penalty in California, calling it discriminatory and immoral and granting reprieves to the 737 condemned inmates on the nation’s largest Death Row.” https://t.co/FS44Iw44wo
— Pamela Colloff (@pamelacolloff) March 13, 2019
This is HUGE news.
I’m deeply grateful that California Governor @GavinNewsom is halting executions.
It’s fundamentally barbaric and almost exclusively used against poor people and people of color.
Thanks Governor. And thanks to all who fought for this.https://t.co/8LYTpbX6aq
— Shaun King (@shaunking) March 13, 2019
When Newsom signs the executive order Wednesday, he will also order the closure of San Quentin State Prison’s execution chamber and repeal the state’s official lethal injection protocol.
Abolitionists expressed hope that Newsom’s decision will convince other states across the country to institute their own moratoriums.
“It is a state people look to to set the tone for national policy,” Shilpi Agarwal, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told the Times. “The fact that so many states have abolished the death penalty — but California hasn’t — has given people cover for this narrative that people are still supportive the death penalty.”
Newsom followed the lead of the governors of Colorado, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, who also recently announced moratoriums on capital punishment, as well as Washington State’s Supreme Court, which banned the practice last year.
“A moratorium in California has enormous symbolic value,” Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the Times. “It’s part of the momentum we are seeing.”
Some supporters of the move pointed out that despite California’s status as a blue state, Newsom’s decision was a bold one in light of voters’ recent support for state-sponsored executions. Californians rejected a ballot measure which would have ended the death penalty in 2016.
Gavin Newsom will grant reprieves via executive order to all 737 inmates on death row in California, which is one-quarter of all death row inmates in the U.S. https://t.co/mnHFjAxJ7F
— David Dayen (@ddayen) March 13, 2019
“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 plans to say Wednesday.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.