California says it’s starting to close country’s second-biggest death row

California is moving to dismantle the second-largest death row in the US, three years after the governor placed a moratorium on executions.

The state will move all incarcerated people in the death row section of San Quentin state prison to other prisons within two years, officials said.

"We are starting the process of closing death row to repurpose and transform the current housing units into something innovative and anchored in rehabilitation," the corrections department spokesperson Vicky Waters told the Associated Press.

California, which last carried out an execution in 2006, is one of 28 states that maintain death rows, along with the US government, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. While other states have abolished executions, California is merging its death row population into the general prison population with no expectation that any will face execution anytime in the near future.

Oregon similarly transferred its much smaller condemned population to other prison housing two years ago.

The California governor, Gavin Newsom, imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019 and shut down the state's execution chamber at San Quentin, the historic prison north of San Francisco. Now his administration is turning on its head a 2016 voter-approved initiative intended to speed up executions: officials are capitalizing on one provision that allowed people to be moved off death row.

Corrections officials began a voluntary two-year pilot program in January 2020 that as of Friday had moved 116 of the state's 673 people on death row to one of seven other prisons that have maximum security facilities and are surrounded by lethal electrified fences.