SAN MATEO COUNTY District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe will seek the death penalty against the man accused of killing seven people and injuring another in a mass shooting in Half Moon Bay in January 2023.
Chunli Zhao, a 68-year-old farmworker, is charged with seven counts of murder and one of attempted murder for the shooting, which was carried out at two mushroom farms. Zhao allegedly opened fire on coworkers for what prosecutors have described as a “workplace dispute.”
The state has had a moratorium on executions since 2019, when Gov. Gavin Newsom said his administration opposed capital punishment. The state’s execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison was shut down and the death row population was transferred to other maximum-security prisons around the state.
Wagstaffe said that he was prevented from commenting on the decision directly because of a court gag order. But speaking generally, he said voters had affirmed the death penalty in two recent elections and it therefore remained available to prosecutors.
“The role of a district attorney is, we don’t make the law, we enforce the law,” he said in a phone interview, adding that he believed the law required him to make a decision on seeking capital punishment on a case-by-case basis.
Two attorneys who the DA’s office said were representing Zhao did not return requests for comment on the decision.
Zhao remains jailed without bail and will return to court on Aug. 6 to set a date for a jury trial.
The last conviction that carried a death sentence in California was in Stanislaus County in 2024, when a jury recommended Richard Tyrone Garcia be executed for ordering the murder of three people in 2012.
In San Mateo County, the last person to be sentenced to death was Alberto Alvarez, who was sentenced in 2010 for killing East Palo Alto police Officer Richard May in 2006.
The last execution carried out in California was in 2006 when Clarence Ray Allen was executed for triple murder. He was sentenced in 1982 for the crimes.
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