No. California does not currently carry out executions and has not executed anyone since January 17, 2006. A moratorium signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019 halted all executions, withdrew the state’s lethal injection protocol, and ordered the execution chamber at San Quentin closed.1Office of the Governor of California. Executive Order N-09-19 Even before that order, unresolved legal challenges to the state’s lethal injection procedures had already blocked executions for more than a decade. Roughly 580 to 600 people remain under a sentence of death in California, but no execution is realistically on the horizon.
How the Executions Stopped
The last person executed in California was Clarence Ray Allen, on January 17, 2006. After that, a federal court in the Northern District of California found the state’s implementation of lethal injection fundamentally broken. Inadequate training of execution staff, improper drug mixing, and poorly designed facilities together posed an unconstitutional risk of severe pain. That ruling froze executions on legal grounds long before any political decision entered the picture.
The political decision came on March 13, 2019, when Governor Newsom signed Executive Order N-09-19. The order granted a reprieve to every person on California’s death row, withdrew the state’s lethal injection protocol, and directed the immediate closure of the execution chamber at San Quentin.2Governor of California. Governor Gavin Newsom Orders a Halt to the Death Penalty in California Two barriers now sit between California and any execution: the courts have not signed off on how the state would kill someone, and the governor has said the state will not try while his order stands.
What the Moratorium Does and Doesn’t Do
The moratorium changes what the state will do, not what any sentence says. Every condemned person in California remains legally sentenced to death. No conviction has been vacated, no sentence commuted. The order is a reprieve, meaning executions are paused; it is not a commutation, which would permanently reduce those sentences to something like life without parole.
That distinction matters because a reprieve issued by executive order lasts only as long as the issuing governor, or a sympathetic successor, keeps it in place. A future governor could rescind it. Death penalty opponents have urged Newsom to commute all death sentences before leaving office precisely because a commutation, unlike a reprieve, cannot be undone by the next administration.
There is also a constitutional catch on commutation. If a condemned person has two or more felony convictions, the governor cannot commute the sentence without a recommendation from the California Supreme Court, with at least four of the seven justices concurring.3California Legislative Information. California Constitution Article V Section 8 Many people on death row have prior felonies, so any large-scale commutation effort would require case-by-case cooperation from the court.4FindLaw. Procedures for Considering Requests for Recommendations Concerning Applications for Pardon or Commutation
Why the Methods Themselves Don’t Work
California’s Penal Code still authorizes two methods of execution: lethal injection and lethal gas. A condemned person may choose between them in writing after receiving an execution warrant; lethal injection is the default if no choice is made within ten days. The statute also provides that if one method is ruled unconstitutional, the state must use the other.5California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 3604
Neither method is currently usable. In 1996, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a permanent injunction against California’s use of lethal gas, finding that inmates exposed to cyanide gas remained conscious for up to a minute or more and experienced pain the court compared to a major heart attack or being held underwater.6FindLaw. Fierro v. Gomez (1996) That injunction has never been lifted. Lethal injection was blocked first by the federal court’s findings about the flawed state protocol, then by Newsom’s 2019 withdrawal of the protocol entirely.
A renovated lethal injection facility at San Quentin, reportedly built at a cost of $853,000, was never used. Under the 2019 order, the chamber was closed.1Office of the Governor of California. Executive Order N-09-19
What California Voters Have Said
Voters have not resolved the stalemate. In 2012, Proposition 34 asked them to replace the death penalty with life without parole. It failed, with roughly 52 percent voting to keep capital punishment. In 2016, Proposition 62 made essentially the same request and lost again, about 53 to 47 percent.
On the same 2016 ballot, voters approved Proposition 66, which went the other way. Rather than abolish the death penalty, it tried to accelerate it. Proposition 66 moved initial habeas corpus petitions from the California Supreme Court to trial courts, imposed a five-year target for completing appeals, required attorneys who handle noncapital appeals to take death-penalty cases, and limited successive petitions.7California Secretary of State. Proposition 66 – Death Penalty. Procedures. Initiative Statute
In practice, the five-year timeline has not been met. A shortage of qualified capital defense attorneys, the complexity of these cases, and the size of the condemned population have left the deadline aspirational. So voters twice rejected abolition and once voted to speed executions up, and the state still hasn’t carried one out in nearly two decades.
What Would Have to Happen for Executions to Resume
Resuming executions would take more than a change in governor, though that is the starting point. The lethal injection protocol was withdrawn in 2019, so the state would have to draft a new one, put it through public review, and defend it against the constitutional objections that stopped the previous version. The execution chamber at San Quentin was closed and would have to be reestablished. The federal court’s concerns about the previous protocol have never been fully answered. And lethal gas remains under a permanent federal injunction. Any governor who wanted to restart executions would be beginning what amounts to a years-long administrative and legal effort.
The People Still on Death Row
Between about 580 and 600 people remain under a sentence of death in California. Historically, condemned men were held almost entirely at San Quentin State Prison, now called the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, primarily in the East Block. In 2020, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation began the Condemned Inmate Transfer Program, moving condemned men out of San Quentin and into general population units at other maximum-security prisons with lethal electrified perimeter fences.8California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. CDCR Provides Update on Condemned Inmate Transfer Program
Their sentences continue to move through appeals in the meantime. Every death sentence triggers an automatic appeal directly to the California Supreme Court, whether the defendant requests one or not.9California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1239 Direct appeal is followed by state habeas corpus, then federal habeas review. Historically, the full sequence has taken 25 to 30 years in California. Since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1978, only 13 executions have occurred, despite hundreds of death sentences.
So the answer to whether California carries out executions is no, and the answer to whether that will change soon is also no. The sentences stand. The chamber is closed. The methods on the books can’t lawfully be used as they are. Any shift would require a new governor, a new protocol, and litigation the state hasn’t yet begun.