In summary
If approved by the California Supreme Court, the number of people sentenced to death nationwide would drop by nearly a third.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom today moved to commute the death sentences of all 548 people facing execution in the state, allowing them to instead serve life sentences without the possibility of parole.
The California Supreme Court must approve some of these commutations. If it does, Newsom’s action would be responsible for the largest mass commutation of death sentences in U.S. history.
“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 in an open letter to Californians.
Newsom’s decision, which his office said would benefit 529 men and 19 women, does not guarantee they will all be resentenced. The justices will have to decide whether to approve commutations for people convicted of multiple felonies, more than half of those in question.
Nationwide, only about 440 people on death row have received commutations since 1972. As a result of Newsom’s announcement, the entire population of people sentenced to death in the United States could drop by nearly a third, according to a Marshall Project analysis of data on death sentences collected by scholar Frank Baumgartner and the Death Penalty Information Center.
The Marshall Project previously reviewed data on 9,000 U.S. death sentences and found inequities in California dating back 50 years. Death sentences in the state are more common among Black and Hispanic people, and defendants in some counties are far more likely to face execution than those in others.
Newsom has spoken out about disparities in death sentences throughout his time as governor, and reiterated his concerns in an open letter announcing the commutations.
“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 ends in January, is considering a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
Shortly after he became governor in 2019, he declared a moratorium on executions. California later transferred people off death row to live among the general population at other prisons. But the punishment can only be abolished in California through a public referendum, so prosecutors across the state continue to seek death sentences. A future governor could choose to reverse course and revive the state’s death chamber.
Newsom’s decision illustrates how governors can take a more active role in stopping executions, at a moment when federal courts have proven less likely to do so. From the 1970s through the 2000s, the U.S. Supreme Court issued numerous rulings that limited who could be sentenced to death. But the court’s current conservative supermajority almost never halts executions; the Death Penalty Information Center reported that the high court did not grant a single stay of execution last year.
That leaves more room for governors to stop executions through clemency. Newsom’s move will invariably add fuel to calls on other governors on their way out the door to save people from execution, including Republican Mike DeWine of Ohio and Democrat Laura Kelly of Kansas, both of whom have criticized the death penalty in the past.
A few commutations have recently come from red state governors in the middle of their terms, like Kay Ivey of Alabama and Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, in cases where the person facing execution was an accomplice, rather than directly responsible for the murder in question.
Historically, Democratic governors have commuted large numbers of death sentences right before leaving office, although Newsom’s closest predecessor was a Republican. In 2003, Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted 167 death sentences as he left office. He had previously supported capital punishment, but had been shaken by exonerations of innocent people from his state’s death row.
Criticism of Newsom’s action — from victims’ groups, prosecutors, and police — began last month, after the governor signaled an interest in commuting sentences on his podcast.
“Baby killers, cop killers, spree killers and serial killers have all found an ally in Gavin Newsom,” Marc Klaas, the father of Polly Klaas, a 12-year-old girl who was kidnapped and murdered in 1993 by a man who later received a death sentence, told Fox News Digital.
Meanwhile, Klaas’ sister, Jess Nichol, issued a statement after Newsom’s announcement describing her support for the decision.
“I used to think the man who killed my sister deserved execution,” Nichol 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.”
In his open letter, Newsom said he consulted with crime victims and survivors, public safety experts and religious and civil rights leaders on his decision. He wrote that he chose not to exclude any prisoners from the commutations, because it would “inadvertently create two classes of murder victims” and each victim “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,” Newsom wrote.
Advocates are praising Newsom’s action and hailing it as a victory for death penalty opponents. The New York Times reported that anti-death penalty groups are sponsoring a minute-long commercial that will air nationwide.
The New York Times reported that he minute-long commercial casts the governor’s decision as an act of courage and leadership inspired by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dolores Huerta and Robert F. Kennedy. It will air on dozens of news and political shows nationwide, said Dan Newman, a Democratic strategist who advises both Mr. Newsom and the anti-death penalty groups sponsoring the ad.
Not everyone on Newsom’s commutation list may celebrate. Although many people under a death sentence in California did not have lawyers to work on their appeals — due to a statewide funding crisis — they were entitled to lawyers, and now they won’t be. Last year, two federal death row prisoners tried unsuccessfully to refuse clemency from President Joe Biden, saying they wanted to keep trying to prove their innocence in court, and would only get funding to do so while under a death sentence.
When California voters last considered abolishing the death penalty in 2016, prisoner Kenneth Hartman argued, writing for The Marshall Project, that replacing death sentences with life sentences robs people of lawyers while replacing one kind of death sentence with another. “Life without the possibility of parole is the death penalty, pure and simple,” he wrote.
After Newsom leaves office, prosecutors will likely continue to pursue death sentences in areas where they have historically been popular, like Riverside and San Bernardino counties in Southern California.
California’s incoming governor, Democrat Xavier Becerra, has said he would extend Newsom’s moratorium on executions. But if Californians do not vote to abolish the death penalty, and Becerra does not revive executions, the state could eventually be in the same quandary that Newsom was facing: People will be sentenced to death in a state that refuses to execute them — a broken system that satisfies neither side of the debate.
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.