List of people executed in California explained

The following is a list of people executed by the U.S. state of California since capital punishment was resumed in the United States in 1976.

Since the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Gregg v. Georgia, the following 13 people convicted of murder have been executed by the state of California.^[1] The first 2 executions were by gas inhalation; all subsequent executions were by lethal injection,^[2] following a 1996 federal court (9th Circuit) ruling that the use of the gas chamber in California was unconstitutional.^[3] A further 2 people sentenced to death in California (Kelvin Malone and Alfredo Prieto) were executed in Missouri and Virginia.^[4]

List of people executed in California since 1976

	Name	Race	Age	Sex	Date of execution	Method	County	Victim(s)	Governor
1		White	39	M	April 21, 1992	Gas chamber	San Diego	John Mayeski and Michael Baker	Pete Wilson
2		White	36	M	August 24, 1993		Alameda	5 murder victims
3		White	49	M	February 23, 1996	Lethal injection	Los Angeles and Orange	14 murder victims
4		White	48	M	May 3, 1996		Merced	Lourdes Meza, Miguel Vargas, and Salvador Vargas
5		White	43	M	July 14, 1998		Orange	Ginger Fleischli
6		Asian	47	M	February 9, 1999			Packovan Wattanaporn and Quach Nguyen	Gray Davis
7		Black	50	M	May 4, 1999		Sacramento	Leah Schendel
8		Native American	45	M	March 15, 2000		Shasta	4 murder victims
9		White	59	M	March 27, 2001		San Francisco	Boris G. Naumoff
10		White	48	M	January 29, 2002		San Bernardino	Elizabeth Lyman
11		White	61	M	January 19, 2005		San Mateo	Stacey Benjamin and Patty Geddling	Arnold Schwarzenegger
12		Black	51	M	December 13, 2005		Los Angeles	4 murder victims
13		Native American	76	M	January 17, 2006		Glenn	4 murder victims

Demographics

Race
White	8	63%
Black	2	15%
Native American	2	15%
Asian	1	8%
Age
20–29	0	0%
30–39	2	15%
40–49	6	46%
50–59	3	23%
60–69	1	8%
70–79	1	8%
Sex
Male	13	100%
Date of execution
1976–1979	0	0%
1980–1989	0	0%
1990–1999	7	54%
2000–2009	6	46%
2010–2019	0	0%
2020–2029	0	0%
Method
Lethal injection	11	85%
Gas chamber	2	15%
Governor (Party)
	0	0%
George Deukmejian (R)	0	0%
Pete Wilson (R)	5	38%
	5	38%
Arnold Schwarzenegger (R)	3	23%
Jerry Brown (D)	0	0%
Gavin Newsom (D)	0	0%
Total	13	100%

See also

• Capital punishment in California
• Capital punishment in the United States

Notes and References

1. Web site: Execution Database | Death Penalty Information Center. Death Penalty Information Center. May 23, 2019.
2. Web site: The History of Capital Punishment in California . . 2018-08-12 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160302160531/http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Capital_Punishment/history_of_capital_punishment.html . 2016-03-02 . dead .
3. Fierro, Ruiz, Harris v. Gomez . 77 . F.3d . 301 . U.S. 9th Circuit . 1996 . https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=26906922262871934.
4. Web site: Inmates Executed 1978 to Present. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. November 17, 2021.