On Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on the death penalty, saying he would grant clemency to all 737 people on death row in San Quentin. The closing of the nation’s largest death row (you can see photos of the death chamber at San Quentin being dismantled already) brings us much closer to the end of the death penalty in America.
In the past, governors who declared a moratorium on the death penalty may have taken a political risk, but Newsom’s decision very much reflects popular opinion about the death penalty — and harsh-on-crime approaches to criminal justice in general. Indeed, as the Death Penalty Information Center has pointed out, more than one-third of the nation’s death-row population is in states in which governors have said no executions will take place. California’s last execution was in 2006, but studies estimate California was spending $175 million a year on an unused punishment. So while his move was bold, in my view, Newsom essentially cut the cord on a punishment that was already at the end of its rope.
While it is technically still on the books in most states, the death penalty is actually imposed only in a few isolated counties. I have mapped county-level death sentencing data, and you can vividly see how rural counties essentially dropped off the map. In the mid-1990s, more than 300 people were sentenced to death each year in as many as 200 counties. By contrast, just 39 people were sentenced to death last year.
[For more on this story by Brandon L. Garrett, go to https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.acb754305aab]
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