Why has California not executed anyone since 2006?

Capital punishment remains a legal penalty in California, but executions have been frozen since 2006 due to court orders regarding lethal injection and a subsequent gubernatorial moratorium. Despite voters repeatedly rejecting initiatives to repeal the death penalty, the number of inmates awaiting execution has declined significantly due to natural causes, resentencing, and fewer jury death sentences. While the California Supreme Court upheld the state's death penalty rules in 2021, the legal and political freeze remains in effect.

What we know

• Executions in California have been halted since 2006 due to a federal court order against lethal injection practices and a 2019 moratorium ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom. [2]
• The California Supreme Court struck down the state's capital punishment statute in 1972 in People v. Anderson, though voters quickly reinstated it via a constitutional amendment. [2]
• Capital punishment, also referred to as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. [3, 4]
• As of October 2026, Department of Corrections records show 563 inmates awaiting execution, driven down by suicides, deaths from other causes, resentencings, and fewer jury death sentences. [2]

Still open

• It remains unresolved whether executions will actually resume if the current gubernatorial moratorium and legal freezes eventually conclude under existing state law.

Where to go next

• how we knowWhat did the court decide in People v. Anderson?
• what caused itHow did Governor Gavin Newsom implement the execution moratorium?
• how it workedWhat are the lethal injection protocols challenged in California courts?
• the bigger pictureHow does capital punishment function across the United States?
• compared withHow did Canada abolish capital punishment?
• an unexpected connectionWhy were California death row inmates executed in other states?Although California has maintained a de facto and de jure freeze on executions for decades, specific inmates sentenced in California have nonetheless been executed while housed or tried in other states like Missouri, Virginia, and Florida.

Sources

• [1]capital punishment in California (Wikidata Q2858821) · CC0 1.0
• [2]Capital punishment in California · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [3]Bibliography of the history of capital punishment · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [4]Outline of capital punishment · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [5]Capital punishment in Canada · CC BY-SA 4.0