Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that he will commute all 548 death sentences in California to life in prison without the possibility of parole, a decision that would remove the threat of execution while leaving the convictions in place.
In his open letter, Newsom called upon the California Supreme Court to approve 382 of those commutations, since CA’s constitution requires the court to grant clemency of anyone convicted of a felony more than once.
“I take this action because 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. 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,” Newsom wrote.
The decision goes beyond Newsom’s 2019 moratorium, which halted executions but left death sentences in place. The commutations would change those sentences, while leaving the convictions intact.
Michael Parente, a clinical associate professor at the Gould School of Law and co-director of its Post-Conviction Justice Project, said the announcement was a long time coming. Before joining USC, Parente spent a decade as a federal public defender representing people on California’s death row.
“I don’t think the death penalty is functioning well anywhere that it’s been applied or attempted,” Parente said. “It clearly was not functioning well [in California]. You don’t end up with the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere for no reason. So this system was not one that was satisfying anybody.”
Parente said the time and effort needed to investigate cases carefully and prevent wrongful executions and racial bias have strained the system’s resources beyond financial costs.
“People in California don’t want an unreliable, speedy death penalty system, and at the same time, we also don’t want or are not satisfied with a system that has a lot of tremendous delays and backlogs, and so people are not satisfied with either of those choices,” Parente said. “If you’re going to have a system that imposes the ultimate punishment, you need to be willing to have all the checks in place to make sure that that punishment is fair, that it’s not tinged with racism, and that has not been possible.”
Newsom’s announcement does not repeal the death penalty or prevent prosecutors from seeking it in future cases. In a statement posted Thursday, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman acknowledged that Newsom has the constitutional power to commute sentences, and said that capital punishment remains California law.
“Until the law is changed, my office will continue to evaluate every death penalty-eligible case with the rigor, care and restraint these decisions demand,” Hochman wrote in his statement. “As always, we will be guided by the facts, the law and the evidence. If the legislature or the voters remove the death penalty, we will follow that law just as faithfully.”
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer also issued a statement, in which he said that the commutations disregarded jury decisions and the wishes of California voters who have retained capital punishment. He said he would continue pursuing death sentences in cases he considers appropriate.
“The pursuit of justice does not bend to political whims, and I am heartbroken for the hundreds of families who must now grapple with the devastation of knowing that the monsters who harmed their loved ones are one step closer to being back out on our streets,” Spitzer stated.
In his letter, Newsom acknowledged that some victims’ families would strongly disagree with the decision. He said he had listened to victims and survivors, whose views differed. Newsom wrote that he came to the decision of issuing life without parole to condemned offenders, as it is “the most severe punishment I can lawfully impose and the state of California can ethically enforce.”
Parente said ending prolonged death penalty litigation could bring finality, but that should not be confused with healing for families.
“In fairness, it does not bring closure to the victims, and I do have a lot of respect for the victims,” Parente said. “But as the governor notes, this has not been a satisfying process for victims who are essentially held in limbo while the death sentence remains in endless litigation.”
Parente said the decisions that remove the threat of execution can offer “some degree of hope” to the Post-Conviction Justice Project clients who were formerly on death row.
“I mean, these are people who are no longer living under a death sentence, and so now they can start thinking, ‘well, yes, they may have done a horrible thing in the past, but what are ways that they can still live a life that is valuable today?’” he said.
Edited by Adilene Gomez Santiago and Miranda Huang.