Last year, “California experienced the largest death-row population decline of any U.S. death penalty jurisdiction. Sixty-six people came off of the state’s death row, one by exoneration, 52 by non-capital resentencing, and 13 by deaths in custody,” Robert Dunham reported late last month in his Death Penalty Policy Project (DP3) Substack.
“The death-row removals were twenty times larger than the three new death sentences imposed in the state,” Dunham said, and noted that, “It was the first time the state’s death row had been below 600 since the summer of 2001.”
Death Penalty Focus Board President Mike Farrell said Dunham’s report “was not a surprise, but good news because it comes from an independent source who confirms and validates our 37-year effort to abolish the death penalty by educating, advocating, and organizing to raise awareness about our broken death penalty system.
“Support is falling because the racism, geographic disparities, and wrongful convictions that are emblematic of our broken death penalty system were on full display in 2024. And as they hear or read about these issues, people become less inclined to support this seriously flawed, barbaric punishment.
“It underscores our unshakable belief that once people learn the facts about the death penalty and not the falsehoods spread by death penalty zealots, support for capital punishment will decrease. As Gandhi noted, “When the people lead, the leaders will follow.”
Farrell said there’s no question that “Gov. Newsom’s moratorium has had an undeniable effect on California’s declining population of death-sentenced individuals and death sentences. Prosecutors are realizing they can save money and time by seeking life sentences at no risk to their law-and-order credentials. Reasonable people can see that our crime rate didn’t increase when Newsom instituted a moratorium in 2019. Politicians aren’t running on the death penalty in California anymore. It’s essentially a moot point now.
“But there’s still much to be done. The California Supreme Court is still considering a challenge to California’s death penalty that was filed last April. It asserts that the state’s death penalty statute is racially discriminatory, as applied, and is therefore unconstitutional under the Equal Protection guarantees of the California Constitution. We hope they will see the wisdom of that challenge and rule accordingly. And, taking nothing for granted, we, with our allies, are working to persuade Gov. Newsom to commute the death sentences of the 574 people in California’s prisons to life sentences before he leaves office in 2026.”
