LOS ANGELES: California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Thursday he would commute the death sentences of all 548 inmates currently condemned to execution in his state, the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere, declaring that he believes capital punishment to be morally wrong.
The announcement, in a three-page letter addressed to “all Californians”, came as Newsom, a Democrat who is expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination in 2028, neared the end of his second and final four-year term as governor.
Newsom, who previously served as mayor of San Francisco and lieutenant governor, declared a moratorium on executions in March 2019, about two months after first taking office as governor. California last put a prisoner to death in 2006, when Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor.
Capital punishment remains on the books in California as a sentencing option unless repealed by voters or the legislature, and could be restored to practice by future governors.
Voters last upheld the death penalty in 2016, rejecting a referendum to abolish executions while approving another measure designed to reform and speed up the process.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said his office would continue to “evaluate every death penalty-eligible case with the rigour, care and restraint these decisions demand”.
Under Newsom’s sweeping grant of clemency, the death sentences of all 548 condemned prisoners will be commuted to life in prison without eligibility for parole. Under the state’s constitution, California’s Supreme Court must review clemency granted to any offender twice convicted of a felony.
Matter of conscience
The governor said he was “acting on my long and deeply held conviction that individually and collectively we are stronger as a society when we reject state-sanctioned killing”.
He acknowledged that death row inmates were convicted of causing “indescribable suffering”, and that “many Californians feel that those who commit brutal crimes deserve to die”.
“But as governor, I have concluded the state cannot morally kill them,” Newsom wrote. “These offenders will die in prison, but not by our hand.”
The US debate over capital punishment intensified recently after Tennessee’s failed execution of condemned killer Christa Pike, who survived two attempts to inject her with lethal drugs on Sept 30.
Pike, whom witnesses heard gasping, crying, whimpering and breathing loudly through much of the botched procedure, was hospitalised afterwards and sent back to prison on Oct 10.
The death penalty received further scrutiny after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans to livestream the planned firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others in a shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas on Nov 5, 2009.
President Donald Trump later ruled out a livestream of the execution, but Hasan is still scheduled to be executed by firing squad on Dec 3.
Newsom’s announcement came as executions were scheduled in three other states, one of which was carried out on Wednesday in Indiana, with two others expected later in the day in Alabama and Florida.
At odds with public opinion
Still, Newsom’s action on the death penalty gives him a signature legacy on a highly contentious social issue as he lays the groundwork for what is expected to be a bid for the White House in two years.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted weeks after the botched execution in Tennessee found 55 per cent of Americans supported the death penalty for people convicted of the most serious crimes, down from 63 per cent in 2017, while 31 per cent said they opposed capital punishment altogether.
In the same poll, a third of respondents said they believed the government should try a second time to put a condemned criminal to death if a first execution attempt failed.
About 15 countries still actively execute people, according to the human rights group Amnesty International. The death penalty remains on the books in 27 US states, although executions are concentrated in a handful of those states, and more than 20 states have abolished capital punishment altogether.
California’s cohort of condemned inmates accounts for more than a fourth of nearly 2,000 prisoners on death row nationwide, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre.
Newsom’s death penalty stance contrasts sharply with that of Trump, who resumed US government executions following a 20-year gap near the end of his first White House term, putting 13 federal prisoners to death by lethal injection in his final few months in office.
Although the clemency act has no bearing on federal cases, Bill Essayli, a Trump-appointed US prosecutor in Los Angeles, decried Newsom’s move as “a major blow to Californians and the families of victims murdered in horrific circumstances”.
Newsom signalled he was considering a mass commutation in an Oct 1 podcast conversation with death penalty opponent Bryan Stevenson.
“I have to prepare for my own consciousness, my rocking chair test,” Newsom said. “Do I commute the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere?”
Stevenson encouraged him to do so.
Death penalty opponents raise the possibility of wrongly executing an innocent person, note racial and socioeconomic disparities in the application of capital punishment, and argue there is no convincing evidence that it deters murder more effectively than life imprisonment without parole.
Supporters argue that capital punishment provides just punishment for the most serious crimes, deters would-be offenders and ensures murderers cannot kill again.