In December of 1970, when Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller reduced the sentences of all 15 men on Arkansas’ death row to life in prison, it was an unprecedented move that he hoped other governors would follow.
Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan followed suit 33 years later in 2003, commuting the sentences of 167 death row prisoners just before he left office. This week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom joined the club.
On Thursday, 56 years after Rockefeller did so, Newsom moved to grant clemency to all 548 prisoners on California’s death row, reducing their sentences to life without parole and bringing about the largest mass commutation in U.S. history.
Newsom, in an open letter addressed to all Californians, wrote that “state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system and diminishes each of us.”
“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,” he continued.
He added that he was following “the moral leadership of past presidents, including our Founding Fathers, and governors across America, from all political parties, who used their executive authority to commute death sentences.”
Though Newsom didn’t name him, Rockefeller is undoubtedly on that list.
Rockefeller’s wasn’t the first mass commutation in America (or even in Arkansas), but it was arguably the most notable up to that point. Time Magazine at the time called it “the most sweeping use within memory of a state chief executive’s power to revoke capital punishment,” and it happened during a period when the country was collectively struggling with the question of the death penalty.
There had been no executions in the United States since 1967, and the Supreme Court would soon rule the practice unconstitutional in 1972. For a moment, it seemed that we might leave the practice of state-sanctioned killing in the past, though states quickly moved to enact their own death penalty laws and the Supreme Court reaffirmed the legality of executions in 1976. In January 1977, a Utah firing squad executed convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, bringing an end to the longest period without executions in modern American history.
Newsom’s historic decision has brought memories of Rockefeller back into the minds of some Arkansans, like legendary journalist Ernie Dumas, who was there when Rockefeller announced that the state would not put 15 men, 11 Black and four white, to death.
“Rockefeller was pretty moving that day. I thought he was going to cry,” Dumas told the Arkansas Times, adding that he was pretty emotional himself. Dumas covered the commutations for the Arkansas Gazette, making the front page of the Dec. 30, 1970, issue.
He wrote about Rockefeller again in his memoir, “The Education of Ernie Dumas: Chronicles of the Arkansas Political Mind”
When he ran for governor the first time in 1964, Rockefeller said he was opposed to the death penalty and would never carry out an execution if he were elected. One of his last official acts, on New Year’s Eve, after his defeat by Bumpers and before leaving office, was to commute the death sentences of all fifteen men who were awaiting execution. He said their records and the severity of their crimes bore no relevance to his decision, and he knew that his was an unpopular stand in Arkansas. He was simply opposed to the penalty.
“My position on capital punishment has been clear since long before I became governor,” he said. “I am unalterably opposed to it and will remain so as long as I live. What earthly mortal has the omnipotence to say who among us shall live and who shall die? I do not. Moreover, in that the law grants me authority to set aside the death penalty, I cannot and will not turn my back on lifelong Christian teachings and beliefs, merely to let history run out its course on a fallible and failing theory of punitive justice.”
Dale Bumpers breathed a great sigh of relief that day. With Death Row emptied, he would never have to face the dilemma of signing a death warrant.
The Rev. Jeff Hood, a prominent death penalty opponent based in North Little Rock and occasional contributor to the Arkansas Times, also weighed in:
The silence after the very breath of a human being is violently wrestled out of them during an execution is deafening. I’ve heard it fourteen times. Today, Governor Newsom has courageously chosen to break that silence. These commutations represent the height of moral leadership. Cruelty laid down. Now, I’m left with one prayer: God, don’t let any of the governors in the other executing states get any sleep until they find the ethical stamina to follow Newsom’s lead.
Arkansas currently has 22 people on death row, down from 23 after the Oct. 26 commutation of Eric Reid, who was to be executed for killing his wife and daughter in October 2015.
It seems unlikely that Gov. Sarah Sanders, who enacted a law last year allowing the use of nitrogen gas to execute people after Arkansas couldn’t get ahold of any lethal injection drugs, would ever follow in the footsteps of Newsom, a figure she frequently and vocally criticizes.
“I believe in justice for the victims,” Sanders said when asked about the death penalty during an October gubernatorial debate. “I think it’s one of the most difficult, challenging things that any governor can face.”