Aba Gayle, former OADP Board member, Advisory Council member, international speaker, and murder victim family member, was invited by Governor Gavin Newsom prior to his announcement of his moratorium of California’s death penalty.

Reflecting on her visit in California, Aba Gayle said, “I am still basking in the joy of being invited by Governor Newsom to meet with him just prior to the announcement of his Moratorium to the Death Penalty.

Updated March 13 at 3:29 p.m. ET AP Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping order on Wednesday putting an executive moratorium on California's troubled death penalty, thus ordering a reprieve for the 737 people on death row.

The action suspends any further executions in California as long as Newsom is governor. But only California voters can repeal the death penalty, something they rejected narrowly three years ago.
Our death penalty system has been — by any measure — a failure.

On the evening of Nov. 1, as day turned into night outside the Riverbend National Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, Edmund Zagorski spoke his last words. “Let’s rock,” he said, before prison staff covered his head with a black shroud and sent thousands of volts of electricity through his body. At 7:26 p.m. he was pronounced dead.Zagorski had specifically requested to die by electrocution rather than lethal injection, which has been the standard method for many years. He wanted to avoid the seemingly torturous deaths endured when dying by lethal injection.