California’s moratorium on executions highlights a growing resistance to the death penalty in many states.
A chair is removed from the death penalty chamber at San Quentin State Prison in California on March 13. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Wednesday, placing a moratorium on the death penalty. By Mark Berman Mark Berman National news reporter Email Bio Follow March 14 at 5:47 PM The execution chamber at the San Quentin State Prison near San Francisco has never been used, an $853,000 facility that has sat empty for more than a decade.
In some states, the death penalty has been frozen or abolished by officials, the courts or a combination of both. Authorities in some states that retain the practice say they have no lethal injection drugs and are not trying to obtain any. In other places, officials have sought to carry out death sentences but have faced legal hurdles or been unable to obtain the chemicals needed for lethal injections amid resistance from drug companies.
Death penalty chairs and gurney are loaded onto a truck. Supporters of capital punishment argue that the death penalty is necessary as a deterrent and should be available for heinous crimes. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer has questioned whether the death penalty as a whole is constitutional, describing it as unreliable, arbitrary and plagued by delays, and assailed California’s system in a 2016 dissent.
Thirty states retain the death penalty, along with the federal government and the U.S. military, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Of the 20 states that currently have no death penalty, eight shifted that way since 2007, including Maryland, Illinois and Washington state, where the Supreme Court last year struck it down.
Nebraska and Nevada turned to fentanyl as multiple states have looked to new drug combinations or other execution methods to carry out death sentences. Tennessee last year resumed using the electric chair while Florida adopted a new anesthetic in 2017 that had not previously been used in an execution. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine last week said he was delaying three executions to give corrections officials more time to develop a new lethal-injection method after a judge denounced its existing protocol.
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