California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered all death row inmates on the country’s largest death row in San Quentin State Prison to be transferred to other maximum security prisons within the next two years on Monday.
Vicky Waters, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections, said the purpose of the move from the prison near San Francisco is to turn the former living areas into a rehabilitation area.
“We are starting the process of closing death row to repurpose and transform the current housing units into something innovative and anchored in rehabilitation,” Waters said.
Waters added that there is no plan to repurpose the never-used execution chamber.
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Newsom, a Democrat, placed a moratorium on executions in 2019. The moratorium will remain in effect until Newsom leaves office. The move from the death row facilities into the regular prison population does not change the sentence of anyone convicted of capital punishment. However, California has not seen an execution since 2006.
Correction officials began moving death row inmates from the facility in a two-year pilot program in 2020. So far, 116 out of 673 male inmates have been moved to one of seven facilities. More information from the pilot program is expected within the next few weeks, including proposed regulations, Waters said.
California voters in 2016 voted to keep the death penalty. California remains one of 28 states, plus the federal government, that still has the death penalty.
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Two executions have been carried out in the United States in 2022 so far, with one in Alabama and one in Oklahoma.
