Notable accounting of California’s recent capital punishment administration realities

The Sacremento Bee has this lengthy new piece, headlined “Justice or politics? Here’s why California prosecutors seek death penalty despite moratorium,” providing all sorts of notable history and particulars about the administration of capital punishment in the Golden State.  I recommend the piece in full, and here are a few excerpts:

The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office was just one of three to secure capital punishment in 2023, among California’s 58 counties. And prosecutors’ pursuit of the death penalty has slowed but hasn’t stopped, despite a statewide moratorium….

But a person has not been executed in California in nearly two decades after legal arguments arose over lethal injections, the state’s execution method. Gov. Gavin Newsom halted executions by instituting a moratorium in March 2019. Prosecutions resulting in the death penalty have declined since then — five or fewer each year since 2019, compared to a yearly average of just over 15 from 2003 through 2018….

Capital punishment and its legality in California have changed over time. Executions in the state’s early history were only allowed in county jails or “some convenient private place” in the county under the Criminal Practices Act of 1851, according to a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation document.  But the Legislature barred local executions, and moved killings to the state level in 1891. The first ever executions by the state happened March 3, 1893, at San Quentin State Prison and Dec. 13, 1895, at Folsom State Prison.

A series of state and federal court decisions halted executions in California for 25 years starting from 1967.  The California Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.  The ruling led 107 inmates on death row to be resentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill in 1977 proposing to revive the death penalty, a highly controversial move that outraged voters who had approved a proposition seeking executions in 1972, according to The Sacramento Bee’s previous reporting. The state Senate and Assembly overrode Brown’s veto, only the third time since 1946 the Legislature had reversed a governor’s signature.

Voters then approved Proposition 7, the current statute of the death penalty, in 1978. The first execution under that statute did not come until 1992.