What to Know About Gavin Newsom’s Historic Commutation of All California Death Sentences

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.

Opponents to the death penalty welcomed the move, arguing that it is consequential to the broader movement to abolish the death penalty. Supporters of the death penalty, including some groups representing victims of crime and their families, have argued that the action disregards individual judgments reached by courts and the feelings of victims’ families.

The move will be among Newsom’s final actions before he leaves office in January. He is expected to announce a 2028 presidential run, which some argue Thursday’s action could impact, for better or for worse.

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.

Newsom has taken actions against the death penalty before. He dismantled the execution chamber at San Quentin in 2019 and the next year began transferring its death row inmates into the general population at other secure prisons where they had more access to work and restitution opportunities while remaining under death sentences. Newsom later converted the facility into a rehabilitation center, and in February, he opened a new Learning Center expanding education, training, and reentry services.

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.

The governor has long argued that the administration of the death penalty has been unequal. After announcing the moratorium on executions in 2019, Newsom said in an interview that he was responsible for addressing “a race-based system. The fact is, you’re better off in this country to be rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.”

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.

Elisabeth Semel, a professor of law at U.C. Berkeley and co-director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the university, tells TIME there exist “racial disparities in who faces capital punishment, who is sentenced to death, and who is executed” that trace back to the country’s history of slavery, segregation, and lynching.

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.

Semel says most states do not provide adequate counsel or resources to people facing the death penalty. At the end of 2025, 391 people, or 70% of California’s death row population, were awaiting the appointment and/or funding of lawyers for state habeas corpus proceedings, according to a May 2026 report by the Habeas Corpus Resource Center.

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.

Some political analysts have warned that Newsom’s decision could expose him to criticism during a general election. While support for capital punishment in California and nationwide has declined since historical highs in the tough-on-crime eras of the mid-1980s and 1990s, the issue remains divisive. The death penalty remains legal in 27 states.

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.

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.

Even so, Semel tells TIME that the court’s role is “extremely limited.” The court is not meant to decide whether each applicant deserves mercy, but rather whether the governor’s action is an “abuse” of his broad constitutional authority, such as corruption or a conflict of interest, Semel says.

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation (CJLF), which advocates for victims’ rights and public safety in state and federal courts, argued in a statement that the action overrides the decisions of juries that settled on verdicts and judges that handed down sentences. It also goes against the wishes of California voters, who twice rejected propositions to repeal the death penalty in 2012 and 2016, argued Anne Marie Schubert, a former Sacramento district attorney and the president and CEO of CJLF.

Newsom is not the first governor to issue a blanket commutation: In 2003, Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, commuted 167 death sentences before leaving office—then the largest blanket grant of capital clemency. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, commuted all three remaining death sentences to life without parole in March 2020, the same day he signed legislation abolishing capital punishment.

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.”

“Some have said I should not grant clemency to people who committed the ‘worst of the worst’ crimes,” Newsom wrote. “I have learned, however, from speaking with the victims harmed by these crimes, that each experiences their loss as the worst of the worst. I have concluded that attempting to distinguish among crimes and offenders for clemency would inadvertently create two classes of murder victims—those whose perpetrators deserve the death penalty and then the rest.”

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.

Klaas’s father, Marc Klaas, has opposed the commutations, describing Newsom’s decision as a “knife in the back” to victims’ families. Several other victims’ families had urged Newsom not to grant clemency, with some saying they were not given a chance to meet with him.

“The pain of losing a loved one through violence never goes away. The best we can hope for is some finality in the legal process so that we can begin healing,” the group wrote. “But for many victims’ families the death penalty prolongs an already agonizing experience with a lengthy process that leaves survivors with more pain, despair, and isolation.”