Newsom moves to commute California's 548 death sentences

Richard Allen Davis, convicted of kidnapping and killing 12-year-old Polly Klaas, is among the people whose death sentence Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to convert to life without parole.

Newsom announced Thursday that he will commute the sentences of all 548 people currently under death sentence in California. He called the decision one of the hardest of his career and wrote that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values, undermines the legal system and diminishes society.

What changes: Life without parole is the harshest punishment Newsom can impose through clemency. The people affected would remain in prison for life, but they would no longer face execution. The action does not repeal the death penalty, which remains in California law, or prevent prosecutors from pursuing it in future cases.

The catch: The broad announcement is not the last legal step for everyone. Newsom said 382 of the cases require California Supreme Court review because those prisoners have more than one felony conviction. He asked the court for its recommendation by the end of the year, before his term ends in January.

California has not carried out an execution since Jan. 17, 2006, when Clarence Ray Allen was put to death by lethal injection. Newsom halted executions in 2019. Since voters reinstated the death penalty in 1978, California has carried out 13 executions. The state has kept the punishment anyway: voters rejected repeal measures in 2012 and 2016, while approving a 2016 measure intended to speed up capital cases.

The argument underneath it: Prosecutors and some victims' relatives said Newsom had overridden sentences reached by juries and courts. Marc Klaas, Polly's father, called the decision a "knife in the back" to victims' families. Los Angeles County Public Defender Ricardo García backed the move, citing what he described as deep inequities in the death-penalty system. The number that matters now is 382, the cases awaiting the state Supreme Court's review before Newsom leaves office in January.