California’s death row still exists on paper, but no one has been executed since 2006, and a moratorium signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in March 2019 has stopped executions entirely for as long as he remains in office. Roughly 589 people were held under condemned sentences as of April 2025, and most of the condemned men have already been moved out of San Quentin into general-population housing at two dozen other state prisons. Death sentences are still being handed down, appeals are still working through the courts, and the penal code still authorizes lethal injection. Nothing is happening at the end of that pipeline.
Why No One Is Being Executed
Executive Order N-09-19, signed on March 13, 2019, granted a reprieve to every person under sentence of death in California.1Executive Department State of California. Executive Order N-09-19 The order also withdrew the state’s lethal injection protocol and closed the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison.2Governor of California. Governor Gavin Newsom Orders a Halt to the Death Penalty in California No convictions were overturned. No one was released. Every death sentence remains legally intact.
The moratorium rests on the governor’s constitutional reprieve power, which is why it needed neither legislative approval nor a vote of the people to take effect.1Executive Department State of California. Executive Order N-09-19 That same feature makes it reversible. A future governor could rescind the order, and California law still authorizes execution by lethal injection or, at the inmate’s election, lethal gas.3California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 3604 Restarting executions would also require a new, legally defensible protocol capable of surviving constitutional challenge. That is not a small step. Protocol litigation is what stalled executions for the thirteen years between the last execution in January 2006 and the moratorium.2Governor of California. Governor Gavin Newsom Orders a Halt to the Death Penalty in California
How Many People Are on California’s Death Row
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported 589 condemned inmates in its custody as of April 2025, twenty of them women. The population has been shrinking. In 2024 alone, at least 45 people were resentenced to life terms or lesser sentences, one of the sharpest single-year drops in the state’s history.4California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Condemned Inmate Transfer Program
Time on death row averages about 25 years, and some sentences go back more than 40. Natural deaths, resentencings, and the occasional reversal on appeal account for the gradual decline from a peak that once exceeded 700.
Where Condemned Inmates Are Actually Held
For most of California’s history, condemned men were housed exclusively at San Quentin and condemned women at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. Proposition 66, approved by voters in 2016, changed that. It allowed condemned inmates to be housed in any state prison and required them to work, with up to 70 percent of their earnings directed toward victim restitution.4California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Condemned Inmate Transfer Program
CDCR carries out that mandate through the Condemned Inmate Transfer Program. As of October 2025, 512 condemned men had been moved out of San Quentin to 24 different state prisons across California.4California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Condemned Inmate Transfer Program The largest concentrations are at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, California State Prison in Sacramento, and Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego. Condemned women remain at Chowchilla, housed in general population. Transferred men are integrated into high-security general population settings where they can work and participate in programming. The old model of a single segregated death row is effectively gone.
What Crimes Can Get Someone Sentenced to Death
A first-degree murder conviction by itself is not enough. Under Penal Code Section 190.2, the prosecution must prove at least one “special circumstance” and the jury must unanimously agree it is true.5California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 190.2 – Penalty for First Degree Murder If the jury deadlocks on every special circumstance, the court must impanel a new jury to retry that question.6California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 190.4
The statute lists more than 20 qualifying factors. Commonly charged ones include:
- Murder for financial gain
- Multiple murders in the same proceeding
- Felony murder committed during a robbery, kidnapping, rape, or arson
- Murder of a peace officer in the line of duty or a judge in retaliation for official actions
- Torture murder
Without a proven special circumstance, the harshest sentence available for first-degree murder is life without the possibility of parole.5California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 190.2 – Penalty for First Degree Murder Even with one proven, the jury still chooses between death and life without parole. A special circumstance opens the penalty phase; it does not guarantee a death sentence.
Why Appeals Take Decades
A California death sentence sets off a three-stage review that routinely runs 25 years or longer.
Automatic Direct Appeal to the California Supreme Court
Under Penal Code Section 1239, every death sentence is automatically appealed straight to the California Supreme Court, skipping the intermediate Court of Appeal entirely.7California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1239 The appeal proceeds whether the defendant wants it or not, and the court appoints separate appellate counsel to handle the briefing.8Judicial Branch of California. California Rules of Court 2026 – Rule 8.603 In General The court must issue a written opinion within 90 days of oral argument.9California Attorney General’s Office. A Victim’s Guide to the Capital Case Process Getting to argument is what takes 10 to 15 years, mostly because of delays in appointing qualified counsel and preparing the trial records these cases generate.
State Habeas Corpus
Habeas petitions raise issues that don’t appear in the trial record, most often ineffective assistance of counsel, withheld evidence, or newly discovered proof of innocence. Proposition 66 imposed deadlines: under Penal Code Section 1509, the initial petition must be filed within one year of the appointment order, and the superior court must resolve it within a year of filing, extendable to two years only for substantial actual-innocence claims. Late or successive petitions face dismissal unless the petitioner shows, by a preponderance of the evidence, actual innocence or legal ineligibility for the death penalty.10California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1509
Federal Habeas Corpus
Once state remedies are exhausted, a condemned inmate can petition a federal district court under 28 U.S.C. Section 2254.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2254 – State Custody; Remedies in Federal Courts In capital cases from qualifying states, the petition must be filed within 180 days of the end of state direct review, with the clock paused while certiorari or state post-conviction proceedings are pending.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2263 – Filing of Habeas Corpus Application; Time Requirements The district court’s ruling can be appealed to the Ninth Circuit and then to the U.S. Supreme Court. Most California capital cases currently sit somewhere in this final stage.
What Voters Have Said
California voters have voted on the death penalty three times in recent years and produced a contradictory result. Proposition 34 in 2012 would have replaced the death penalty with life without parole; voters rejected it. Proposition 62 in 2016 proposed the same change and lost again, with about 53 percent voting no. In the same 2016 election, voters approved Proposition 66, which kept the death penalty and tried to speed it up by imposing habeas deadlines, shifting initial habeas petitions to the trial court, expanding the defense-counsel pool, and allowing condemned inmates to be housed and put to work in any state prison.13California Secretary of State. California General Election Official Voter Information Guide
Three years later the governor halted executions by executive order. The death penalty is still in the state constitution, courts still impose it, and the penal code still authorizes it. There is simply no mechanism to carry it out while the moratorium stands.
Wrongful Convictions and the Innocence Safety Valve
Nationwide, at least 202 people sentenced to death have been fully exonerated since 1973, roughly one exoneration for every eight executions carried out in the United States. California has seen multiple exonerations of its own, and the slow appeals process has in some cases been what kept an innocent person from being executed.
Penal Code Section 1509 builds that concern into the statute. Even a late or successive habeas petition that would ordinarily be dismissed must be heard if the petitioner offers evidence of actual innocence or legal ineligibility for the death penalty, which the statute defines to include cases where no special circumstance is true, where the defendant was under 18 at the time of the crime, or where the defendant has an intellectual disability.10California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1509 Speed and finality, in the legislature’s judgment, cannot come at the cost of executing someone who should never have been sentenced to death.