page_title: Capital punishment in California
section_title: 1972 suspension of capital punishment
hierarchical_section_title: Capital punishment in California / History / 1972 suspension of capital punishment
caption_attribution_description: English: Central California Women's Facility Español: Prisión de Mujeres del Centro de California
context_page_description: Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of California. As of March 2019, further executions are halted by an official moratorium ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom.
  The state carried out 709 executions from 1778 to the 1972 California Supreme Court decision in People v. Anderson that struck down the state capital punishment statute. 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.
  As of August 2018, official California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records show 744 inmates on California's death row. Reports published in August 2017, when there were 746 on death row, showed that 22 of those were waiting on women's death row in the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.
  California rejected two initiatives to repeal the death penalty by popular vote in 2012 and 2016, and it adopted in 2016 another proposal to expedite its appeal process.
context_section_description: On April 24, 1972, the Supreme Court of California ruled in People v. Anderson that the state's current death penalty laws were unconstitutional. Justice Marshall F. McComb was the lone dissenter, arguing that the death penalty deterred crime, noting numerous Supreme Court precedents upholding the death penalty's constitutionality, and stating that the legislative and initiative processes were the only appropriate avenues to determine whether the death penalty should be allowed. The majority's decision spared the lives of 105 death row inmates, including Sirhan Sirhan (assassin of Robert F. Kennedy) and serial killer Charles Manson. McComb was so outraged by the decision that he walked out of the courtroom during its reading.
  Following the ruling, the Constitution of California was modified to reinstate capital punishment under an initiative called Proposition 17. In 1973 a new statute was subsequently enacted, making the death penalty mandatory for a number of crimes including first degree murder in specific instances, kidnapping during which a victim dies, train wrecking during which a victim dies, treason against the state, and assault by a life prisoner if the victim dies within a year.
  The debate over capital punishment played out in a somewhat similar fashion on the national level. On June 29, 1972, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Furman v. Georgia, holding all capital punishment statutes then in effect in the United States to be unconstitutional. On July 2, 1976, the Supreme Court, in Gregg v. Georgia, reviewing capital punishment laws enacted in response to its Furman decision, found constitutional those statutes that allowed a jury to impose the death penalty after consideration of both aggravating and mitigating circumstances. On the same date, the Court held that statutes imposing a mandatory death penalty were unconstitutional.
  In a later decision in 1976, the Supreme Court of California again held the state's death penalty statute was unconstitutional as it did not allow the defendant to enter mitigating evidence. A further 70 prisoners had their sentences commuted following this. The next year, the statute was updated to deal with these issues. Life imprisonment without possibility of parole was also added as a punishment for capital offenses. A later change to the statute was in 1978 after Proposition 7 passed. This gave an automatic appeal to the Supreme Court of California, which would directly affirm or reverse the sentence and conviction without going through an intermediate appeal to the California Courts of Appeal.
  In 1983, The State Bar of California created The California Appellate Project as a legal resource center to implement the constitutional right to counsel for indigent persons facing execution. At around the time of its founding, Michael Millman became the director of CAP. Millman served as director of CAP for 30 years. CAP oversees the efforts to assist private lawyers representing the more than 700 people on California's death row.
caption: Central California Women's Facility, the location of the death row for female inmates
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