California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday, November 5, that he is commuting the death sentences of every prisoner on California's death row — all 548 of them, 529 men and 19 women — to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Death Penalty Information Center calls it the largest mass clemency in American history. Newsom made the move two days after Tuesday's midterm elections, in the final months of his governorship — his term ends in January 2027.
Not all of it happens on his signature alone. For 166 of the prisoners, the commutations take effect on the governor's own authority. The other 382 were convicted of multiple felonies, and under California law their sentences can only be commuted if the California Supreme Court recommends it, with at least four of the court's seven justices agreeing. Newsom has asked the court to return its recommendations by the end of 2026. The move does not abolish the death penalty — California voters voted to keep it in 2012 and again in 2016 — and the state has not executed anyone since 2006. Newsom himself imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019.
The names on his list include some of the most notorious killers in the state's history: Charles Ng, who murdered 11 people with Leonard Lake; Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and strangled 12-year-old Polly Klaas; Randy Kraft, convicted of 16 murders; and Cary Stayner, who killed four women in the Yosemite area. Newsom refused to separate them from the rest, saying picking among crimes would create “two classes of murder victims.” In his letter he argued that “state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us,” and called life without parole “the most severe punishment I can lawfully impose and the state of California can ethically enforce.” “We can now let these offenders die in obscurity while we forever remember and honour the victims,” he wrote.
The reaction from the victims' side was immediate. California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones said Newsom “just commuted the death sentences of 548 killers, including the man who murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas,” and that victims' families were not even notified. “Eight years of going easy on criminals and hard on victims. This is his legacy,” Jones said. Victims' advocates have vowed to fight the commutations in court.
For ordinary Californians, the decision lands on ground the voters themselves already decided: twice in the last fourteen years they went to the ballot box and voted to keep the death penalty, and juries imposed these 548 sentences one case at a time. One governor, on his way out of office, has now set every one of those sentences aside — and the families who sat through those trials face watching the men convicted of murdering their children and parents grow old in prison instead of facing the punishment the courts handed down.
📰 ProfiloPolitics Member News — choose your news, share it, earn credit:
https://white-curlew-963569.hostingersite.com
Never miss a story — Join our Telegram channel
Breaking U.S. political news, live as it happens — plus the stories the big outlets sit on.
Join ProfiloPolitics on Telegram