In the U.S. state of California, capital punishment is not allowed to be carried out as of March 2019, because executions were halted by an official moratorium ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom. Before the moratorium, executions had been frozen by a federal court order since 2006, and the litigation resulting in the court order has been on hold since the promulgation of the moratorium. Thus, there will be a court-ordered moratorium on executions after the termination of Newsom's moratorium if capital punishment remains a legal penalty in California by then.
San Quentin Rehabilitation Center (SQ), formerly known as San Quentin State Prison, is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
Thomas and Jackie Hawks were a couple from Prescott, Arizona, United States, who were murdered in 2004.
Tiequon Aundray "Lil Fee" Cox is an American street gangster and mass murderer who was sentenced to death for the August 31, 1984 murders of various family members of NFL football player Kermit Alexander. Cox is currently incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison.
Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) is a female-only California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison located in Chowchilla, California. It is across the road from Valley State Prison. CCWF is the second largest female correctional facility in the United States, and houses the only State of California death row for women.
Michael Hubert Hughes is a convicted American serial killer on death row in San Quentin. Hughes was initially sentenced to life without parole for the murders of four women and girls in California. Later, he was convicted of committing three further murders of women, linked to the crimes via DNA profiling. At the second trial, he was sentenced to the death penalty.
The murder of Stephanie Kuhen in Los Angeles, California created significant media attention in the United States and led to crackdowns on Los Angeles street gangs.
David Ormon Carter is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Maria del Rosio "Rosie" Alfaro is an American woman convicted of the 1990 murder of 9-year-old Autumn Wallace in Anaheim, California. She is currently on California's death row.
Gerald Parker is an American serial killer who raped and murdered five women in Orange County, California. A sixth victim, who was pregnant at the time of the attack, survived, but her child was delivered stillborn. The crimes took place in 1978 and 1979, but Parker was not identified as the killer until 1996. Parker confessed to the murders, and was sentenced to death on January 21, 1999. Following his conviction, another man, Kevin Lee Green, who had been charged with the attack of the pregnant woman who survived and who was his wife at the time had served 16 years in prison; he was subsequently exonerated and released.
Michael Thomas Gargiulo is a convicted American serial killer. He moved to Southern California in the 1990s and gained the nickname The Hollywood Ripper. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death on July 16, 2021. He is currently incarcerated in California Health Care Facility.
Timothy Joseph McGhee is a convicted serial killer and Toonerville Rifa 13 gang member from the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. He is alleged to be responsible for at least 12 homicides between 1997 and 2001, three of which led to convictions. McGhee is also suspected of at least ten attempted murders, four of which led to convictions. In 2018, the Los Angeles Times named McGhee one of the top 20 most notorious killers in the history of California, a list that included the likes of Charles Manson, the Golden State Killer, and the Night Stalker.
Stuart Anthony Tay, was an American teenager from Orange County, California and a student at Foothill High School. Five teenagers believed that Tay was planning to betray them in a planned theft of computer equipment, so they arranged to kill him. All of the perpetrators were students at Sunny Hills High School. Most of the perpetrators had planned to attend elite colleges and universities, including Ivy League schools.
On January 22, 2016, three inmates of the Orange County Men's Central Jail in Santa Ana, California, escaped from the jail's maximum-security unit by climbing through the plumbing pipes and ascending to the roof. They stole a utility van and a taxi in Los Angeles, taking the taxi driver hostage, and drove to San Jose. One inmate, Bac Duong, went along with the hostage driver back to Southern California and surrendered to police in Santa Ana on January 29. The other two inmates, Hossein Nayeri and Jonathan Tieu, were arrested in San Francisco on January 30. Multiple people were arrested for allegedly aiding the inmates to escape, including a jail teacher.
Regis Deon Thomas is an American convicted murderer and Bloods gang member who was sentenced to death for the 1993 murders of Kevin Michael Burrell and James Wayne MacDonald, two officers in the Compton Police Department who were shot dead during a traffic stop in the City of Compton. They were the only Compton police officers killed in the line of duty in the department's 65-year history. Thomas was also convicted of murdering another man in 1992 in Torrance, California.
Jarvis Jay Masters is an American author and death row inmate at California's San Quentin State Prison.
