In an open letter to Californians on Thursday, Newsom said he would commute the sentence of every death row inmate to life in prison without the possibility of parole—“the most severe punishment I can lawfully impose and the state of California can ethically enforce.”
California holds the largest number of people on death row in the U.S. and the western hemisphere. Newsom’s action, if fully enforced, would commute a quarter of all death sentences in the country. It takes a step beyond the moratorium that has been in place since Newsom first became governor in 2019. Newsom’s successor, Democrat Xavier Becerra, has also committed to a stay on carrying out executions.
The state last executed a person in 2006 under the governorship of Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The question of capital punishment has received heightened scrutiny in the U.S. since Tennessee botched the execution of Christa Pike at the end of September, which led her to be hospitalized for days before returning to prison. On Thursday, Alabama, Florida, and Indiana carried out executions by lethal injection. And the planned military execution of Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood also drew national attention after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in October that the execution would be live-streamed. President Donald Trump has since scrapped that live-streaming plan, but the military execution by firing squad is still planned for December.
“Because the death penalty is inherently incompatible with our legal system’s commitment to justice, I have determined that this clemency decision, while difficult in many respects, will ultimately affirm the strength and integrity of our state and its justice system,” he wrote.
On an episode of Newsom’s podcast last month that featured Equal Justice Initiative director Bryan Stevenson, the governor described the question of whether or not to grant universal clemency as a test of his conscience.
According to the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center, at least 203 people on death row across 30 states have been exonerated based on evidence of innocence since 1973. That includes eight people in California.
Black people accounted for a third of California’s death row population, despite making up around 6% of the state’s overall population, according to Judicial Council budget materials from May. Of those exonerated nationwide since 1973, 65% were people of color and more than half were Black. A 2017 analysis by the National Registry of Exonerations found that official misconduct contributed to the wrongful convictions of 87% of Black death row exonerees, compared to 67% of white death row exonerees. A 2024 study of California murder and manslaughter convictions between 1978 and 2002 also found that Black and Latino defendants were more likely to receive death sentences, even after accounting for culpability and statutory aggravating factors.
Death penalty opponents also argue that carrying out executions is a costly endeavor. Since 1978, when California reinstated the death penalty, the state has spent around $6 billion on the death penalty system while executing 13 men, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Many death penalty cases also involve lengthy legal battles, keeping people on death row for years and sometimes decades. Two-thirds of the people on death row in California were sentenced more than 20 years ago, according to the center.
But analysts also said that the move could boost Newsom’s popularity among progressive voters during a Democratic primary. “A governor who … predicts or precipitates capital punishment’s end in California could look visionary,” wrote David Carrillo, executive director at Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center, and attorney Brandon Stracener last month.
‘Mercy for the wolves’
Newsom’s decision will not automatically commute the sentences of everyone on death row. While the governor has constitutional authority to grant clemency, cases involving a person with multiple felony convictions must be reviewed by the Supreme Court. That means that 382, or around 70%, of the 548 sentences Newsom seeks to commute will have to be reviewed.
The move will also likely face legal challenges, but Semel says lawsuits against similar moves in other states have not succeeded because the governor has broad authority to grant clemency.
Nevertheless, victims’ rights groups have raised both moral and legal objections to the move.
In an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times last month, Schubert, alongside El Dorado County district attorney Vern Pierson, argued that blanket commutation “substitutes an individual executive’s stance for those individual judgments.”
But Schubert and Pierson argued that clemency deserves individual review. “Clemency is a legitimate constitutional power. It can correct injustice or recognize circumstances warranting mercy,” they wrote. “But the authority to grant clemency carries a responsibility to exercise it wisely and justly. That requires examining each case on its merits, not treating hundreds of distinct judgments alike. How do we explain otherwise to the families we asked to trust the system?”
“You cannot have crime without punishment,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer, a Republican, said in a statement on Thursday. Spitzer described Newsom’s action as “mercy for the wolves and while inflicting the ultimate act of cruelty on the sheep.”
‘Expands the circle of pain’
In his letter, Newsom acknowledged that some victims’ families would strongly disagree with his decision, which he said “will always weigh heavily” on him.
Among those Newsom met with was Jess Nichol, whose stepsister Polly Klaas was kidnapped and murdered in 1993 at age 12. Nichol once believed in the death penalty, but said in a statement that “over time I’ve realized that whether he’s executed has absolutely nothing to do with my recovery or with real public safety.” She now helps facilitate rehabilitation and mediation programs at San Quentin.
Earlier this week, a group of 50 murder victims’ family members sent a letter to Newsom calling for blanket commutation.
Other opponents to the death penalty, including former prosecutors, former corrections officials, faith leaders, and civil rights groups, wrote similar letters urging universal clemency in the months preceding Thursday’s announcement.
Semel, who has represented defendants in criminal cases for more than 50 years, including people facing capital punishment for more than 40, tells TIME that “all of my experiences have solidified my view that the death penalty reflects the worst in us.
“It is ultimately an act of retribution that perpetuates violence and hatred and expands the circle of pain inflicted on loved ones beyond the grief victim family members endure to our clients’ families—their parents, siblings, and especially their children—and to us as a society.”
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