Capital punishment in California

In the U.S. state of California, capital punishment is a legal penalty. However it is not allowed to be carried out because executions were halted by an official moratorium ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom. Prior to the moratorium, executions were frozen by a federal court order since 2006, and the litigation resulting in the court order has been on hold since the promulgation of the moratorium. Thus, there will be a court-ordered moratorium on executions after the termination of Newsom's moratorium if capital punishment remains a legal penalty in California by then. The state carried out 709 executions from 1778 until 1972 when the California Supreme Court struck down California's capital punishment statute in the case People v. Anderson. California voters reinstated the death penalty a few months later, with Proposition 17 legalizing the death penalty in the state constitution and ending the Anderson ruling. Since that ruling, there have been just 13 executions, yet hundreds of inmates have been sentenced. The last execution that took place in California was in 2006. Two people condemned in California (Kelvin Malone and Alfredo Prieto) have also been executed in Missouri and Virginia. official California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) records show that there are 689 inmates awaiting execution in California, the lowest it has been since 2011, primarily due to suicide, death from other causes, fewer juries willing to sentence people to death, and resentencings by newly elected district attorneys, among other things. 21 of those on death row are females, held at the female death row in the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, with the other 668 inmates awaiting execution being males that are housed throughout the state, although most males are housed in San Quentin State Prison. California voters rejected two initiatives to repeal the death penalty by popular vote in 2012 and 2016, and they narrowly adopted in 2016 another proposal to expedite its appeal process.