WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th March, 2019) The US state of California spared the lives of more than 700 people currently on death row by suspending the use of the death penalty, California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a press release on Wednesday.
"Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order today placing a moratorium on the death penalty in California," the release said. "The executive order also calls for withdrawing California's lethal injection protocols and immediately closing the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison."
While the executive order spares the lives of the 737 people currently on death row in California, it does not grant the release of any individual from prison or alter any current convictions or sentence, the governor's office said.
"The intentional killing of another person is wrong and as Governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual. Our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure," Newsom said in the release.
California joins Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania as the fourth US state to have a governor-imposed ban on the death penalty.
Since 1978, the most populous US state has spent $5 billion on a death penalty system that has executed 13 people, according to the release.
In October 2018, the Washington Supreme Court struck down the penalty as unconstitutional. The court explained that the death penalty is also invalid because it has been imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.
