Newsom Commutes the Sentences of California's 548 Death Row Inmates
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
As a non-American, could someone explain this to me?
The quoted bit is just literally saying that CA has more death row inmates than other states. That doesn't mean they sentence more people to death, a large part of the reason is that they haven't carried out an execution in 20 years. So the numbers will continue to grow instead of shrinking until the inmates die from some other cause (age, illness, suicide, etc.). This is in contrast to states like FL and TX that continue to carry out death sentences, so the numbers will grow as people get sentenced but shrink faster than in CA as they carry out the executions.
Ah, that explains it, thanks!
I was wondering why one of the most "liberal left" states, with a strong opposition to the death penalty would have so many death sentences - but it makes sense that the large number of inmates is instead a consequence of them not carrying out the sentence.