A bill to strike a controversial reference to lynching from California's criminal code was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday.
Since 1933, California law characterized the act of taking a person from lawful police custody as "lynching." But, as Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), the measure's author, noted, for most people the term "lynching" has a more violent connotation: when a mob seizes and kills a person, typically by hanging, without a trial.
Lynchings are particularly associated with the killings of black people in the Jim Crow-era South.
"The term 'lynching' carries with it cultural significance and its current usage in California code is contrary to what the vast majority of people understand the term of lynching to entail," Mitchell said on the Senate floor in May.