Outgoing California Governor Gavin Newsom says he will commute every death sentence in the state—548 in total—to life imprisonment without parole. In a letter to residents he argued that state-sanctioned killing clashes with California’s values and corrodes the legal system’s foundations.
The state has not executed anyone since 2006 and has carried out only 13 executions since voters restored capital punishment in 1978. Newsom already froze the chamber in 2019; analysts call the mass commutation largely symbolic yet potentially able to trim costly appellate fights.
He is invoking constitutional clemency. Roughly 382 cases involving multiple felony records still need California Supreme Court assent—at least four of seven justices. Term limits push Newsom out in January; Democrat Xavier Becerra is projected to succeed him after the midterms.
Civil-liberties leaders cheered. ACLU executive director Anthony Romero called the penalty racist, error-prone and inhumane. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman countered that only the legislature or the ballot can abolish death sentences, noting Californians twice voted to keep them for the worst crimes.
Newsom conceded the decision will wound some victims’ families and said the burden sits on him alone. Whether the high court blesses the blanket package will determine how far this late-term conscience vote actually reaches the condemned.
California has long held the largest death-row population in the United States. Male condemned prisoners spent decades at San Quentin, women at the Central California Women’s Facility, before later reforms allowed transfers into other high-security units. With executions rising elsewhere, Newsom’s late-term move plants a deliberate counter-marker before he leaves Sacramento.
