Brenna Ehrlich
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California Governor Gavin Newsom is set to leave office in two months. He's likely to run for president. JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Image Just days after Democrats took control of Congress, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has commuted the sentences of 548 prisoners on the state’s death row to life without parole.
“State-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system and diminishes each of us,” Newsom wrote in an open letter Thursday. “I know we cannot execute people in our imperfect legal system and remain true to our core values, first among them justice and human decency.”
Since the governor is only allowed by state law to give blanket commutations to offenders with one felony, the California Supreme Court will have to approve the commutations of those with multiple felonies — and there’s likely to be a lot of blowback.
According to the New York Times, opponents like Anne Marie Schubert, a former Sacramento district attorney, are likely to challenge the move and allege that Newsom violated the law, arguing that each case should be considered separately. Schubert, who also leads the victims rights group the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, told the Times she plans to sue the governor, who is rumored to be mounting a 2028 presidential run.
“These are people that have suffered unimaginable losses and were given some sense of finality through the justice system,” she told the paper of victims’ families. “That is all being reopened and rehashed.”
After taking office in 2019, the governor instituted a moratorium on executions, even though the state hasn’t executed anyone in 20 years. Governor-elect Xavier Becerra, who is also a Democrat, has said he’d maintain this moratorium. Still, the state has the largest death row in the Western hemisphere, so Newsom’s decision reduces the number of people on death row in the country by about a quarter.
“This decision is among the most difficult of my career,” Newsom wrote, “not because I doubt its necessity for our state but because I know its announcement may surface excruciating memories for victims’ families.” Still, he wrote that as some cases have been “languishing” for 40 years, the finality of this move may provide comfort for some families.
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“I won’t pretend I’ve always opposed the death penalty. I used to think the man who killed my sister deserved execution,” Jess Nichol said in a statement. Her sister, Polly Klaas, was killed in 1993 by Richard Allen Davis, who is on California’s death row. “But over time I’ve realized that whether he’s executed has absolutely nothing to do with my recovery or with real public safety. The system tells survivors that execution matters to our healing. It doesn’t. It’s a distraction from what we actually need.”
The death penalty has been in the news lately due to President Donald Trump‘s propensity for executions. Earlier this year, he announced plans to bring the firing squad back to federal prison. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced that the execution of Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, would be livestreamed in December, before opposition caused Trump to quickly walk back that idea.
