CA To 'Dismantle' The Nation's Largest Death Row Within 2 Years

CALIFORNIA — Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans this week to shut down the nation's largest death row by transferring inmates to other prisons within the next two years.

The governor's $1.5 million request to close San Quentin's Death Row reinforces his eventual goal to do away with capitol punishment and to turn the facility's death row into "positive healing environment," Newsom said in a news conference on Monday.

Funding would be used to hire a consultant to "develop options for (the) space focused on creating a positive, healing environment to provide increased rehabilitative, educational and health care opportunities."

In 2019, the Democratic governor placed a moratorium on executions, and the state has not carried out an execution since 2006.

"We are starting the process of closing death row to repurpose and transform the current housing units into something innovative and anchored in rehabilitation," California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Vicky Waters told The Associated Press.

"I’m not going to be responsible for knowingly taking someone’s life," Newsom said.

The planned closure of facilities that host condemned inmates is "a continuation of the governor’s policy of gradually dismantling California’s death penalty,” according Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

In 2019, there were 737 inmates on California's death row just after Newsom signed the executive order to impose a moratorium on execution, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Corrections officials began a voluntary two-year pilot program in January 2020 that as of Friday had moved 116 of the state’s 673 condemned male inmates to one of seven other prisons that have maximum security facilities and are surrounded by lethal electrified fences.

Newsom also shut down the state’s execution chamber at San Quentin in 2019. Now his administration is pivoting a 2016 voter-approved initiative intended to expedite executions by capitalizing on one provision that allowed inmates to be moved off death row.

"The underlying motive of the administration is to mainstream as many of these condemned murderers as possible,” said Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which backed the initiative. “Our objective was to speed up the process."

Some fiercely oppose the idea of moving condemned murderers into facilities that offer more amenities while the victims families continue to mourn.

Newsom is "pouring more salt on the wounds of the victims,” countered Crime Victims United of California president Nina Salarno. "He’s usurping the law."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.