On Wednesday, May 27, the California Supreme Court issued an order to AG Rob Bonta “to show cause in the Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento when the matter is placed on calendar, why the relief prayed for should not be granted. Each party may advance any procedural or substantive arguments it believes are appropriate in support of, or in opposition to, the relief request. The return is to be filed on or before June 26, 2026.”
Below, Death Penalty Focus President Mike Farrell responds to the Court’s order.
Statement from DPF President Mike Farrell on the CA Supreme Court’s Order:
On Wednesday, in a unanimous decision, the state Supreme Court ordered Attorney General Rob Bonta to show cause why California’s death penalty is not unconstitutional because of its racial bias.
This order is confirmation of what so many of us have been saying for so long: California’s death penalty system has been racially biased for many years in violation of the equal protection provisions of the state Constitution and should have been found unconstitutional a long time ago.
The Court’s order was in response to a 2024 lawsuit filed by a coalition of prominent civil rights and legal organizations stating that, “Extensive empirical evidence demonstrates that California’s capital punishment scheme is administered in a racially discriminatory manner and violates the equal protection provisions of the state Constitution.”
The petition also noted that “Black people are about five times more likely to be sentenced to death when compared to similarly situated non-Black defendants, while Latino people are at least three times more likely to be sentenced to death” in the state.
In 2021, before this lawsuit was filed, the state-appointed members of the CA Committee on Revision of the Penal Code also recommended repealing the death penalty, describing it as “plagued by legal, racial, bureaucratic, financial, geographic, and moral problems.”
The CCRPC pointed out that from 2010 to 2020 in California:
- 74% of new death sentences were imposed on people of color;
- Of the five California counties that imposed the highest number of new death sentences:
- In Los Angeles County, 95% of people sentenced to death were people of color.
- In Orange County, 77% of the people sentenced to death were people of color.
- In Kern County, 63% of people sentenced to death were people of color.
- In San Bernardino County, 50% of people sentenced to death were people of color.
The petitioners noted in their lawsuit that Gov. Newsom stated that “death sentences are unevenly and unfairly applied to people of color…” when he signed his Executive Order instituting a moratorium on the state’s death penalty in 2019. And Attorney General Rob Bonta has already gone on record, stating that racial disparities in California’s death penalty are “profoundly disturbing.”
The organizations that brought this challenge to the Supreme Court — the Office of the State Public Defender, the ACLU of Northern California, the American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project, and the Legal Defense Fund — have done a great service to the 560-plus death-sentenced people in California, but also to every citizen of California who believes in a system that guarantees liberty and justice for all.
— Mike Farrell, President, Death Penalty Focus
The decision is a hinge moment. State supreme courts in Washington (2018), Connecticut (2015), and Massachusetts (1984) have already struck down their death penalties finding the punishment was unconstitutional. California — which has not carried out an execution since 2006 and currently holds more than 560 people under sentence of death — may be next. The burden has shifted. The question is no longer whether the system is racially biased; the empirical record on that point is overwhelming. The question is whether the State can still justify it.
For the more than 560 people living under California’s sentence of death, for the families of victims still waiting for justice from a system that has never delivered it, and for every Californian who believes the equal protection provisions of the state Constitution apply to all, this is the moment we have been waiting for.