Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken the most sweeping action against capital punishment in modern American history, moving to commute the death sentences of all 548 people on California’s death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The decision, announced this week, still requires sign-off from the California Supreme Court for many of the cases, since more than half of those affected were convicted of multiple felonies. If the court grants approval, the move would mark the largest mass commutation of death sentences the nation has ever seen, reducing the entire U.S. death row population by nearly a third, according to an analysis by The Marshall Project based on data from scholar Frank Baumgartner and the Death Penalty Information Center.
In an open letter to Californians, Newsom laid out his reasoning in blunt terms.
“I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us,” he wrote.
The commutations would apply to 529 men and 19 women currently condemned, though Newsom’s office stressed that approval isn’t automatic for all of them. Nationally, fewer than 440 death row commutations have been granted since 1972, making this single action nearly as large as five decades of combined clemency decisions across the country.
The governor’s move follows years of scrutiny over how death sentences have been handed down in California. A Marshall Project investigation of roughly 9,000 capital cases nationwide found that Black and Hispanic defendants in California were disproportionately sentenced to death, and that the odds of receiving such a sentence varied wildly depending on which county prosecuted the case — disparities Newsom has pointed to repeatedly during his time in office.
“By every measure, California’s system for administering the death penalty is a failure,” Newsom wrote. “It has not been and cannot be fairly applied and has resulted in the conviction of innocent people.”
Newsom, whose term as governor ends in January and who is weighing a 2028 presidential bid, imposed a moratorium on executions shortly after taking office in 2019. Since then, the state has moved death row inmates into the general prison population. But because voters have twice rejected ballot measures to abolish capital punishment outright, prosecutors — including those in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where death sentences have historically been more common — have continued to seek them. That means a future governor could, in theory, reopen the state’s execution chamber.
Newsom’s decision comes at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority has grown far less willing to intervene in capital cases. The Death Penalty Information Center noted the court didn’t grant a single stay of execution last year, a sharp break from decades of rulings that once narrowed who could be put to death. With the courts stepping back, governors are increasingly seen as the last line of defense — a dynamic that may embolden other term-limited governors, including Ohio Republican Mike DeWine and Kansas Democrat Laura Kelly, both of whom have voiced reservations about capital punishment.
The announcement has drawn sharp reactions on both sides. Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter Polly was kidnapped and murdered in 1993 by a man later sentenced to death, blasted the decision, telling Fox News Digital that “baby killers, cop killers, spree killers and serial killers have all found an ally in Gavin Newsom.”
But Klaas’ sister, Jess Nichol, offered a different perspective in a statement following the announcement.
“I used to think the man who killed my sister deserved execution,” she said. “But over time I’ve realized that whether he’s executed has absolutely nothing to do with my recovery or with real public safety.”
Newsom wrote that he consulted crime victims, public safety officials, and faith and civil rights leaders before finalizing his decision. He said he deliberately chose not to exempt any cases from the commutations, explaining that doing so would have created “two classes of murder victims,” since each family “experiences their loss as the worst of the worst.”
“I deeply respect the views of those who will strongly disagree with my decision, including some families of victims who have suffered the worst possible loss,” he wrote.
Death penalty opponents have praised the move as a landmark achievement. According to the New York Times, anti-death penalty organizations are backing a new minute-long national television ad that frames Newsom’s decision as an act of moral courage, drawing comparisons to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., labor leader Dolores Huerta and Robert F. Kennedy. The spot is expected to run on political and news programs across the country, according to Democratic strategist Dan Newman, who advises both Newsom and the groups funding the ad.
Not everyone facing commutation may welcome the change, however. Many death row inmates in California have lacked attorneys to pursue their appeals due to a long-running funding shortage in the state’s indigent defense system — but they were still legally entitled to counsel. Once removed from death row, that guarantee disappears. Last year, two federal death row prisoners actually tried to refuse clemency offered by President Biden, arguing they needed the continued legal resources tied to a death sentence to pursue claims of innocence.
The tension isn’t new. During California’s 2016 ballot fight over abolishing capital punishment, death row prisoner Kenneth Hartman wrote for The Marshall Project that trading a death sentence for life without parole doesn’t necessarily help the condemned — it simply swaps one permanent sentence, and the legal resources attached to it, for another. “Life without the possibility of parole is the death penalty, pure and simple,” he wrote.
Looking ahead, prosecutors in counties with a history of pursuing capital cases are expected to keep seeking death sentences even after Newsom departs. Incoming Gov. Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, has indicated he plans to continue the execution moratorium. But unless California voters eventually vote to abolish the death penalty for good, the state risks landing right back in the same bind Newsom inherited — sentencing people to death while refusing, as a matter of policy, to ever carry it out.
This article was produced in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the U.S. criminal justice system.
Original source: CalMatters
