Newsom commutes all 548 California death sentences to life without parole

Term-limited governor says state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has commuted the death sentences of all 548 people on the state’s death row, converting each sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the governor said in a letter announcing the decision.

“We can now let these offenders die in obscurity while we forever remember and honour the victims,” Newsom said in the letter.

In the letter, Newsom said he was exercising his constitutional clemency authority to commute the sentences. Life without the possibility of parole, he said, is the most severe punishment he can lawfully impose and that the state can ethically enforce.

The mass commutation is largely symbolic in a state that has not executed a prisoner since 2006, though experts said it could save millions of dollars in court costs each year. Only 13 inmates have been executed since voters reinstated the death penalty in 1978. California has historically had the largest death row population in the country.

“After nearly 30 years in public office, I have come to understand the limits of what government can justly accomplish,” Newsom said. “I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system and diminishes each of us.”

He described the commutation as a difficult but “righteous action,” saying that although many Californians feel that people who commit brutal crimes deserve to die, he has concluded that “the state cannot morally kill them.”

Newsom said that by every measure, California’s system for administering the death penalty “is a failure,” and that it has not and cannot be fairly applied, resulting in the conviction of innocent people.

The governor ordered a halt to California’s death penalty in 2019. He is term-limited and winding down his final months in office.

The decision comes as Newsom, the Democratic leader of the most populous U.S. state, has been discussed as a possible contender in the 2028 presidential race. Fellow Democrat Xavier Becerra is projected to take over after the midterm elections on Tuesday.