Phyllis Loya can still picture the day her life changed forever. On April 23, 2005, her son, Pittsburg police Officer Larry Lasater, responded to a call about two armed robbery suspects fleeing a bank inside a grocery store. During the pursuit that followed, one of the suspects opened fire from a patch of brush, striking Lasater twice. He died from his injuries, leaving behind a wife who would give birth to their son two and a half months later.
More than two decades after that tragedy, Loya says she feels betrayed all over again — this time by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Last week, in one of his final acts before leaving office, Newsom commuted the death sentences of all 548 condemned killers on California’s death row, converting their punishments to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The decision, announced Thursday, has reignited painful memories for families across the state who spent years — sometimes decades — believing that justice for their murdered loved ones would ultimately include execution.
For Loya, a 78-year-old retired attorney whose son’s killer, Alexander Rashad Hamilton, was sentenced to death for the 2005 shooting, the move felt like a political calculation made without regard for victims’ families.
“It was a deliberate political decision, and he doesn’t care what happens to victims,” Loya said of Newsom. “He doesn’t want our input. He doesn’t want to hear our stories. He doesn’t want to consider us at all.”
Hamilton, now 39, is incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. At his sentencing, he told the judge he didn’t care if he was sentenced to death, dismissing the proceedings and urging the court to “let me go on my way,” according to a report from the San Francisco Chronicle at the time.
Loya remembers her son as a devoted public servant who had planned to lead fellow Marines from his old tank unit back to Iraq shortly before his death. He was a reservist with the U.S. Marine Corps in addition to his work as a police officer.
“He was a wonderful son, a great brother, a terrific grandson, and he would have made a spectacular father,” she said, her voice breaking.
Newsom, in an open letter explaining his decision, called it one of the hardest choices of his tenure — not because he doubts its necessity for California, but because he recognizes the pain it may stir for victims’ families. The California Supreme Court must still approve commutations for roughly 400 inmates convicted of multiple violent felonies before the changes take full effect.
California has not carried out an execution since 2006, even though voters have repeatedly reaffirmed support for capital punishment over the past half-century. Court challenges and a moratorium imposed by Newsom early in his governorship kept executions on hold throughout his time in office.
Reaction among victims’ families has varied widely — from fury to quiet acceptance.
Sandy Friend, whose 8-year-old son Michael Lyons was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in 1996 by Robert Boyd Rhoades in Yuba City, said the news reopened wounds that have never fully healed. Rhoades abducted the boy as he walked home from school, held him for roughly 10 hours, and inflicted dozens of stab wounds before leaving his body along the Feather River.
“This isn’t just numbers on a legal document,” Friend said. “Every case leaves a family behind. Every case carries the story of a horrific, violent ending for someone’s loved one. Wiping all of that away with the stroke of a pen, without weighing the details or looking the families in the eye, was completely unthinkable.”
Friend said she worries that Rhoades, now 73, could one day walk free despite Newsom’s assurances that none of the 548 inmates will ever be released. Her concern is rooted in recent history: just last December, Rhoades attempted to use a 2021 law signed by Newsom — intended to allow inmates to petition for reduced sentences — to shorten his own punishment. His request was denied, but only after Friend and other relatives were forced to revisit the case in court once again.
“He was a little boy. He was my son,” Friend said. “He had a voice, and that voice deserved to be heard, just like the voices of hundreds of other victims and their loved ones.”
Not everyone shares that sense of outrage. Cynthia Annette Johnson’s sister, LaVerne Brison, lost her 30-year-old sibling to serial killer Chester Dewayne Turner, who terrorized South Los Angeles during the 1980s and 1990s, targeting vulnerable women along the Figueroa Corridor — an area once notorious for drug use, prostitution and violent crime tied to the crack epidemic. Johnson’s body was discovered in February 1997 in the nearby Green Meadows neighborhood. DNA evidence eventually linked Turner to her killing and to a total of 14 murders.
Brison, a 75-year-old retired nurse now living in Georgia, said she holds no ill will toward Newsom.
“I don’t blame Newsom,” she said. “He inherited this situation. If he hadn’t acted, what would the next governor have done?”
Brison, who spent her career saving lives, said she has mixed feelings about capital punishment in general but believes some crimes warrant the ultimate penalty. Still, she said she has made peace with the idea that Turner, now 60 and housed at California State Prison, Los Angeles County, will simply spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“I’d rather not waste my time thinking about him,” she said. “I don’t let him live in my head. He’s not worth it. He really isn’t.”
As the state’s high court reviews the governor’s commutations in the coming months, families like Friend’s and Loya’s say they remain determined to make sure their loved ones’ stories are not forgotten, regardless of how the legal process unfolds.
Original source: CalMatters
