Capital punishment

TEN YEARS AFTER LAST EXECUTION, CALIFORNIA’S DEATH ROW CONTINUES TO GROW

Today, a growing number of Californians have reached the inevitable conclusion that it’s time to get rid of the death penalty once and for all. In 2012, a hard-fought ballot initiative to replace capital punishment with life without parole lost by a narrow margin — and in 2014 support for the death penalty dropped to a 50-year low. Yet some remain committed to reviving executions in California — and late last year the state took a number of steps in that direction. In November, the same month a federal judge overturned a ruling that had declared the state’s death penalty unconstitutional on 8th Amendment grounds, officials introduced a new “humane and dignified” lethal injection protocol, replacing its embattled three-drug cocktail with an array of one-dose options.