California death penalty: Governor Gavin Newsom to halt executions

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47549422

He called the death penalty "ineffective, irreversible, and immoral". He cannot end the death penalty in California but is refusing to carry it out while he is in office.

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California Governor Gavin Newsom is due to announce a moratorium on executions and a temporary reprieve for all 737 inmates on death row in the state.

US media report he plans to sign an executive order later on Wednesday, describing the death penalty as "inconsistent with our bedrock values".

California has not carried out any executions since 2006, as a series of court battles over execution methods have been waged.

No death row inmates will be released.

Governor Newsom took office in January and a death penalty moratorium was one of his campaign pledges.

"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.

The order will also withdraw California's lethal injection protocol and close down the state's execution chamber at San Quentin prison.

US President Donald Trump has criticised the executive order in a tweet, saying that the "forgotten" friends and families of the victims are not "thrilled":

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The governor does not have the power to abolish the state's 1978 death penalty legislation permanently. A repeal would require a popular vote in favour of the change. The next opportunity for such a ballot would be at the 2020 elections.

The reprieves Governor Newsom is now issuing will expire when he leaves office; his current term lasts until January 2023.

More than 900 people have been sentenced to death in California since 1978 but only 13 have been executed.

Another 79 have died of natural causes, and a further 26 took their own lives, figures from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation show.

[Zippyjuan]

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row

Once executed, mistakes in convictions cannot be corrected. "Oops- sorry!"

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row


Innocence: List of Those Freed From Death Row

Last exoneration November 5, 2018 (#164)

For Inclusion on DPIC's Innocence List:

Defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently either-

a. Been acquitted of all charges related to the crime that placed them on death row, or

b. Had all charges related to the crime that placed them on death row dismissed by the prosecution or the courts, or

c. Been granted a complete pardon based on evidence of innocence.

For a fuller description of the criteria used in this list and the reasons why these criteria were chosen, see Section V of DPIC's most recent Innocence Report. See also an excerpt below from an article in the Baltimore Sun by Dan Rodricks regarding the use of the term "exonerated."

The list includes cases in which the release occurred 1973 or later.



List of 164 names at link.

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.ajc.com/news/national/death-row-inmate-freed-from-prison-after-years-thanks-new-dna-evidence/nxBSwbofAuyF2qkXMs7YBJ/


Death row inmate freed from prison after 14 years thanks to new DNA evidence

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/man-who-spent-25-years-california-s-death-row-released-n867671



Man who spent 25 years on California's death row is released

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/22/east-bay-man-freed-from-death-row-nearly-33-years-after-conviction/


East Bay man freed from Death Row nearly 33 years after conviction

[AngryCanadian]

Yes maybe next the leftist stupid state should free that baby killer who killed his wife and unborn child to.
Rights for Criminals.

[Swordsmyth]

The Death Penalty should only be used in cases where the highest standard of proof is reached but ending it entirely is wrong.

[Danke]

"It discriminates based on the color of your skin..."

Now if it were only white males being executed by the state, this statist would have no problem with it.

[timosman]

To put things in perspective - last execution was carried out in 2006, during the Arnold years - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_California#Executions_after_ 1976

[Anti Globalist]

Not a big fan of the death penalty. Always a chance the person executed could have actually been not guilty.

[spudea]

"It discriminates based on the color of your skin..."

Now if it were only white males being executed by the state, this statist would have no problem with it.

Ironically of the 13 executions, almost all of them appear to be white males.

[Danke]

Ironically of the 13 executions, almost all of them appear to be white males.

These are the 737 inmates on California's death row


https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-death-row/

[timosman]

Not a big fan of the death penalty. Always a chance the person executed could have actually been not guilty.

It should be restricted to white collar crimes only. Embezzlements of $1B or more. :tears:

[Stratovarious]

Not a big fan of the death penalty. Always a chance the person executed could have actually been not guilty.

Admission of guilt is not enough for a conviction , but I would be ok with the death penalty only in
the case where the Criminal has confessed under 'legal' circumstances.
Yes , mistakes are made.


People can and have been framed and executed for hundreds of years.

[luctor-et-emergo]

He called the death penalty "ineffective, irreversible, and immoral".

Good. I agree.

[Suzanimal]

Good. I agree.

Ditto.

[Anti Globalist]

Good. I agree.


Ditto.
Same here.

[oyarde]

It is not that I really oppose the death penalty for certain things it is just that I lack faith in the govt to ensure they kill the right people in a timely manner . Doing what he is doing , leaving people on death row until he no longer serves is not something I really see as much of a positive .

[Stratovarious]

''When you hang a man , you better look at him.....''

[Origanalist]

Not a big fan of the death penalty. Always a chance the person executed could have actually been not guilty.

I don't trust the state to impartially and fairly prosecute a shoplifting, much less a capital crime.

[Zippyjuan]

Trump is not thrilled. He loves the death penalty and being "tough on crime".

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Trump called for the death penalty for the "Central Park Five" who were accused of raping a jogger in Central Park, New York. They turned out to have been wrongly convicted. He even took out full page ads calling for their deaths.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/17/central-park-five-donald-trump-jogger-rape-case-new-york


Yusef Salaam was 15 years old when Donald Trump demanded his execution for a crime he did not commit.

Nearly three decades before the rambunctious billionaire began his run for president – before he called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, for the expulsion of all undocumented migrants, before he branded Mexicans as “rapists” and was accused of mocking the disabled – Trump called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York following a horrific rape case in which five teenagers were wrongly convicted.

The miscarriage of justice is widely remembered as a definitive moment in New York’s fractured race relations. But Trump’s intervention – he signed full-page newspaper advertisements implicitly calling for the boys to die – has been gradually overlooked as the businessman’s chances of winning the Republican nomination have rapidly increased. Now those involved in the case of the so-called Central Park Five and its aftermath say Trump’s rhetoric served as an unlikely precursor to a unique brand of divisive populism that has powered his rise to political prominence in 2016.




They would all later deny any involvement in criminality that night, but as they were rounded up and interrogated by the police at length, they said, they were forced into confessing to the rape.

“I would hear them beating up Korey Wise in the next room,” recalled Salaam. “They would come and look at me and say: ‘You realise you’re next.’ The fear made me feel really like I was not going to be able to make it out.”

Four of the boys signed confessions and appeared on video without a lawyer, each arguing that while they had not been the individual to commit the rape they had witnessed one of the others do it, thereby implicating the entire group.



Just two weeks after the Central Park attack, before any of the boys had faced trial and while Meili remained critically ill in a coma, Donald Trump, whose office on Fifth Avenue commanded an exquisite view of the park’s opulent southern frontier, intervened.

He paid a reported $85,000 to take out advertising space in four of the city’s newspapers, including the New York Times. Under the headline “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!” and above his signature, Trump wrote: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”


All five minors had already been paraded in front of the cameras and had their names and addresses published, but Salaam said he and his family received more death threats after the papers ran Trump’s full-page screed. On a daytime TV show two days later, a female audience member called for the boys to be castrated and echoed the calls for the death penalty if Meili died. Pat Buchanan, the former Republican White House aide, called for the oldest of the group, Wise, to be “tried, convicted and hanged in Central Park by June 1”.


For Salaam, however, the intent was explicit: “If we were white, would Donald Trump had written this in the paper?”

‘He’s still the same person’

In 2002, after Salaam had served seven years in prison, Matias Reyes, a violent serial rapist and murderer already serving life inside, came forward and confessed to the Central Park rape. He stated that he had acted by himself. A re-examination of DNA evidence proved it was his semen alone found on Meili’s body, and just before Christmas that year, the convictions against each member of the Central Park Five were vacated by New York’s supreme court.


Following a 14-year court battle, the Central Park Five settled a civil case with the city for $41m in 2014. But far from offering an apology for his conduct in 1989, Trump was furious.

In an opinion piece for the New York Daily News, he described the case as the “heist of the century”.

“Settling doesn’t mean innocence, but it indicates incompetence on several levels,” Trump wrote, alluding to how police and prosecutors initially involved in the case have long maintained the five boys were involved in the rape, even after the convictions were thrown out.

[Anti Federalist]

I don't trust the state to impartially and fairly prosecute a shoplifting, much less a capital crime.

I don't trust the state to fix a pothole, let alone carry out an execution.

I agree with this as well.

[Anti Federalist]

"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.

So, Gov, you've essentially admitted the that state is too corrupt, stupid and discriminatory to execute people.

So tell me, why should it have any other powers over our life?

[Anti Globalist]

I don't trust the state to impartially and fairly prosecute a shoplifting, much less a capital crime.
Thats another reason why I'm against it.

[oyarde]

Gavin could just be holding out until he can figure out a way to tax them . Like his drinking water tax plan .......