Newsom Signs Skinner’s Death Penalty Reform Measure

Gov. Gavin Newsom today signed SB 1001, a death penalty reform measure by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, that will ensure that Californians with intellectual disabilities will never be subject to capital punishment.

“It is unconstitutional to execute an intellectually disabled person in the United States. And yet because of insufficient safeguards in California’s current law, some intellectually disabled people have ended up on Death Row. In 2019, Governor Newsom took the courageous step of halting executions. His signing of SB 1001 will ensure that if a future governor reinstates death penalty executions, California will not execute people who are intellectually disabled.”

Gov. Newsom’s signing of SB 1001 came less than a week after the state of Missouri executed a man, and while he was not intellectually disabled, both the prosecutor and the victim’s family argued that Marcellus Williams should be spared the death penalty because of evidence that pointed to him not being guilty.

SB 1001 reforms California’s death penalty statute by no longer requiring defendants to prove that they were diagnosed with an intellectual disability as a youth as long as health professionals certify that the person had the disability during their developmental phase.

The new law recognizes that some people with legally defined intellectual disabilities were not able to be formally diagnosed while they were young, because of socio-economic and other barriers that can prevent the determination of an intellectual disability during a person’s developmental stage.

SB 1001 takes effect Jan. 1.

Sen. Skinner represents the 9th Senate District and is chair of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus and the Senate Housing Committee.