The arbitrary nature of the death penalty--geography dictates state sponsored death

California Governor Gavin Newsom commuted the sentences of every prisoner on the state’s death row—548 people in all. With this action, Newsom is responsible for the largest-ever reduction of America’s death-row population, dropping the national total by about 27 percent. (California’s supreme court must approve some of the clemency requests.), reported The Atlantic.

California last executed a prisoner in 2006, and in 2019 Newsom instituted a moratorium against the death penalty via executive order. But in both 2012 and 2016, Californians narrowly voted against ballot measures that would have repealed the state’s death penalty, meaning many in the state would still prefer to see it in use. Newsom’s commutation order could foreclose that possibility in at least the near future.

Newsom’s commutations underscore how polarized the country has become on the death penalty. Although several states have rejected capital punishment in recent years, a handful of red states are pushing back against that trend, taking ever more extreme measures to hand down death sentences and carry out executions.

America’s death-penalty landscape is defined by dueling philosophies, which means that prisoners convicted of capital crimes face radically different outcomes depending on minor changes in geography: The fate of the same person committing the same murder on either side of the border between Texas, where executions are relatively common, and New Mexico, which does not permit capital punishment, would come down to only a few miles.

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