A moratorium on the death penalty is a temporary, executive-ordered pause on carrying out executions. A governor, the President, or the Attorney General freezes the final step of capital punishment, so no one is put to death while the pause is in effect. Everything else about the system keeps running: prosecutors can still seek death sentences, juries can still return them, and people already sentenced stay on death row under those sentences. The underlying law is not repealed, and the pause lasts only as long as the official who imposed it, or a sympathetic successor, stays in power.
Who Can Impose One
At the state level, this is the governor’s power. Nearly every state constitution gives the governor authority to grant reprieves, meaning temporary postponements of a sentence. A governor who wants to stop executions can issue a blanket reprieve covering everyone on death row. In most states, no legislature, clemency board, or other body has to sign off.
At the federal level, the equivalent authority sits with the President and the Attorney General, who oversees the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons. On July 1, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum directing that no federal executions would be scheduled while the DOJ reviewed its execution policies and procedures.1Department of Justice. Moratorium on Federal Executions Pending Review of Policies and Procedures A President can accomplish the same thing by executive order.
Because the power is executive rather than legislative, it has a built-in fragility. A new governor or president can reverse the moratorium on day one. Courts have generally treated the reprieve power as broad and largely unreviewable. In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2015 that the governor can issue reprieves without justifying them case by case or specifying an end date. In California, the Ninth Circuit rejected an attempt by district attorneys to challenge the governor’s 2019 moratorium, finding they had no authority to represent the state in defending execution protocols.
What a Moratorium Stops and What It Doesn’t
The pause is narrower than the headlines often make it sound. Understanding where it begins and ends is the whole point.
What Stops
All scheduled executions are postponed indefinitely. Any execution date on the calendar is canceled, and no new dates are set. The execution chamber itself may be physically closed, as happened in California in 2019 when the governor shut down the death chamber at San Quentin.
What Keeps Going
Prosecutors can still charge defendants with capital crimes and ask juries for death sentences. Juries can still return them. Convicted defendants still go to death row, which means the death row population can actually grow during a moratorium. Appeals continue on their normal schedule, and the statutory deadlines for filing federal habeas corpus petitions keep running.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2262 – Mandatory Stay of Execution; Duration; Limits on Stays of Execution; Successive Petitions A moratorium does not give inmates extra time to file challenges.
What It Doesn’t Change for Inmates
People on death row remain under a sentence of death. Their sentences are not converted to life in prison. They stay in the restrictive, higher-cost housing reserved for death row. The moratorium protects their lives for its duration and nothing more; their legal status is unchanged.
Moratorium vs. Abolition
Both result in no executions, but legally they are very different things.
A moratorium is an executive action. One official decides to pause executions, and that decision can be undone by the same official or any successor. The capital punishment statute stays on the books.
Abolition is a permanent change to the law. Either the legislature repeals the death penalty statute, or a court strikes it down as unconstitutional. After abolition, no prosecutor can seek a death sentence and no court can impose one. Bringing capital punishment back requires passing a new law, a much harder political task than reversing a predecessor’s order.
The difference shows up at every transition of power. When a pro-moratorium governor leaves office, an incoming governor can resume executions almost immediately. A state that has abolished the death penalty by statute stays abolished regardless of who wins the next election.
Why Governors and Presidents Impose Them
Moratoriums usually come from a combination of concerns rather than a single trigger. Three themes recur.
The first is wrongful convictions. Since the Supreme Court’s 1972 ruling in Furman v. Georgia, 200 people sentenced to death across 30 states have been exonerated. Governors have repeatedly cited exonerations when announcing a pause.
The second is the practical collapse of lethal injection supply. Starting around 2010, pharmaceutical companies refused to sell drugs for use in executions, and international suppliers were pressured to cut off access. States developed untested drug combinations, and some executions carried out under those protocols were prolonged and visibly painful. Ohio’s long-running de facto moratorium stems largely from the governor’s concern that resuming lethal injections would prompt drug manufacturers to stop selling all medications to the state’s prison system.
The third is racial disparity in who gets sentenced to death. Studies across multiple states have found that killings involving white victims are far more likely to result in a death sentence than killings involving Black victims. At the federal level, DOJ data has shown that roughly 80 percent of cases in which prosecutors sought the death penalty involved defendants of color.
Where Moratoriums Stand Now
As of 2026, four states have a governor-imposed hold on executions, alongside the 23 states that have abolished the death penalty entirely.
- California (since 2019). Governor Gavin Newsom granted a reprieve to everyone on death row, withdrew the state’s lethal injection protocols, and closed the execution chamber at San Quentin. Newsom’s term ends in January 2027, and the moratorium’s future depends on his successor.3Governor of California. Governor Gavin Newsom Orders a Halt to the Death Penalty in California
- Pennsylvania (since 2015). Governor Tom Wolf imposed the moratorium, and Governor Josh Shapiro announced in 2023 that he would continue it, pledging to sign a reprieve every time an execution warrant reaches his desk. He has also called on the legislature to abolish the death penalty.
- Oregon (since 2011). Begun under Governor John Kitzhaber and continued through two successors. Governor Kate Brown commuted all sentences on Oregon’s death row in 2022. Governor Tina Kotek has maintained the hold since taking office in 2023.
- Ohio (since 2019). Governor Mike DeWine has maintained an unofficial moratorium by repeatedly postponing execution dates, citing the state’s inability to obtain lethal injection drugs without risking its broader pharmaceutical supply. In February 2025, DeWine said he does not anticipate any executions during the remainder of his term, which runs through 2026.
The Federal Moratorium and Its End
The federal pause took a turbulent path. Attorney General Garland halted federal executions on July 1, 2021, pending a DOJ review.1Department of Justice. Moratorium on Federal Executions Pending Review of Policies and Procedures On December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life in prison without parole. Commutations, unlike moratoriums, cannot be reversed by a future president.
On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety,” directing the Attorney General to pursue capital charges for serious crimes, with particular emphasis on the murder of law enforcement officers and capital crimes committed by noncitizens unlawfully in the country. The order also directed the Attorney General to help states obtain lethal injection drugs and to seek the overruling of Supreme Court precedents limiting capital punishment.4The White House. Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety
On February 5, 2025, the Attorney General formally lifted the federal moratorium, rescinding Garland’s 2021 memorandum and stating that the DOJ would carry out any death sentence imposed by a federal court.5U.S. Department of Justice. Reviving the Federal Death Penalty and Lifting the Moratorium on Federal Executions With only three people remaining on federal death row after the commutations, the immediate practical effect was limited.
What Happens When a Moratorium Ends
Lifting a moratorium does not mean executions resume the next day. The government still needs a valid execution protocol, a supply of lethal injection drugs or authorization for an alternative method, and the machinery to schedule execution dates. Courts may need to resolve pending challenges to the protocol. In states where the pause lasted years, the bureaucratic infrastructure for carrying out executions can atrophy, and rebuilding it takes time.
For inmates, the end of a moratorium means new execution dates can be set. Appeals pick up where they left off. Anyone who exhausted appeals during the pause may face an execution date relatively quickly, while those still in litigation have more time, though no additional time was ever added on their behalf.
The federal sequence shows how much can change during a pause even when the pause itself eventually ends. By the time the moratorium was lifted in February 2025, the commutations that preceded it had already emptied nearly all of federal death row. The pause ended, but what it allowed to happen in the meantime was permanent.