Let me first and most importantly thank the extraordinary turnout legislative leadership of the state.

Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom of California got up in the rotunda of the Sacramento Capitol

and made what was billed as a major policy announcement.

It is humbling to see everybody here assembled today.

But this announcement was more like a policy argument, a closing statement, a full-threaded case against the death penalty.

The question really is, do we have the right to kill?

Do we have the right to kill?

That's a deep and existential question.

I don't believe we do.

I know those things people think is eye for eye,

but if you rape, we don't rape.

I think if someone kills, we don't kill. We're better than that.

Newsom was declaring a moratorium on executions, but he presented it as a kind of personal choice.

He said as the person in charge of signing the death warrants for the 737 people on California's death row.

He just couldn't do it.

And we are, as I speak, as I speak, shutting down, removing the equipment in the death chamber at San Quentin.

And then his office sent on a tweet.

Pictures of the electric chair and the lethal injection table being loaded onto a truck and carted away.

I think it's sort of dramatically illustrating his commitment to not have executions go forward.

Jordan Steiker has been watching this announcement play out.

He's a death penalty lawyer in Texas.

It's one thing to say, you know, I'm unlikely to sign death warrants going forward because I'm troubled by the practice.

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