LOS ANGELES — Three former California governors will back a proposed ballot initiative designed to speed up the state's lengthy death penalty process.
Former Governors George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis plan to announce the start of signature-gathering efforts for a ballot measure at a mid-morning Thursday news conference in Los Angeles.
On a 2012 ballot, 53 percent of California voters rejected an initiative that would have repealed the death penalty.
Nonetheless, executions have been halted since 2006 because of lawsuits in federal and state courts over the three-drug lethal-injection method that had been used to carry out death sentences.
There are more than 700 prisoners on California's death row.
