California | Clock is ticking for Gavin Newsom to commute death sentences, advocates say

Gov. Gavin Newsom still has a year and a half left in office, but advocates are starting their call now for him to commute, or reduce, all death sentences in California.

The state has 585 people sentenced to death.

Throughout his time in the top office, Newsom has repeatedly spoken out against the death penalty system, calling it “a failure” that discriminates based on race and wealth with “no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent.”

In 2019, he set a moratorium on the death penalty and repealed the lethal injection protocol.

In 2022, he dismantled the death row at San Quentin Prison, sending condemned prisoners to 20 other state facilities.

The California Anti-Death Penalty Coalition said converting all death penalty sentences to life without parole would help Newsom cement his legacy. Dozens of supporters gathered for a news conference Thursday morning outside the Capitol.

“In any moment, the moratorium could end, someone can come in and say, ‘You know what, no, let’s kill them all,’ ” said Lisa Holder, President of the Equal Justice Society, a nonprofit legal and policy advocacy organization.

For the hundreds in limbo, Holder said, “It is the opposite of life. It is a living death.”

Organizers said they’re calling for the governor to make the move soon because more than 60% of those on death row have a separate felony conviction that would require the State Supreme Court to approve the commutation.

The move wouldn’t be without precedent. Former President Joe Biden commuted most of the sentences of people on death row in federal prison before he left office, and the governors of Oregon and Colorado also did so in recent years.

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

Source: sacbee.com, Kate Wolffe, June 27, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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