CA Clemency

October 23, 2026

To the editor: I am writing now as I have written so many other times since my brother’s murder in 2003 to tell anyone who will listen that contrary to what is so often proclaimed, the death penalty does not heal murder victim family members (“A death sentence is too heavy a decision to be overturned lightly,” Oct. 21). The death penalty harms victims’ families, other innocent families and society at large.

The death penalty will not bring my brother back. The millions of dollars used to process capital crimes are wasted tax money that could be used to solve cold-case murders like my brother’s. Killers by the hundreds if not thousands are still on the street. Dangling a spectacle of retribution does nothing for public safety, crime victims or justice. The prospect of the state-sanctioned killings of more than 500 people in California is untenable.

We all know that many of these promised executions are extremely unlikely to ever occur, making this a false promise to victims.

In the years since my brother Bob’s murder in Washington state, I have worked actively as a crime victim against the death penalty. In 2023, I testified at legislative hearings in Olympia, Wash., in favor of ending the death penalty. Ultimately, the death penalty there was eliminated by Gov. Jay Inslee. Clemency is a step in the right direction.

I hope Gov. Gavin Newsom will take that step before he leaves office.

Judy Kerr, Albany, Calif.

To the editor: This op-ed doesn’t consider that the death penalty system itself is inherently cruel, discriminatory and irreversible. The death penalty is a violation of human rights, and no government should have the power to take a life, regardless of the crime.

State-sanctioned killing should not be done under the guise of justice. Taking a life will never bring another life back. The death penalty operates under the unfounded pretense that it makes us safer — it does not. Instead, it only perpetuates a cycle of violence.

About 75% of all countries have abolished this cruel punishment in law or practice. The U.S. is an outlier, and it’s time for it to catch up. By commuting death sentences in California, Gov. Newsom could lead the U.S on a path that finally breaks the long and brutal legacy of state-sanctioned violence and upholds human rights for all.

Gavrilah Wells, San Francisco

This writer is the state death penalty abolition coordinator for Amnesty International USA in California.

To the editor: California has spent approximately $6 billion on its death penalty system since 1978. In return, the state has carried out just 13 executions — and none since 2006. That is an extraordinary amount of money for a system that has accomplished so little and remains deeply flawed.

It is also deeply immoral. As a member of the clergy, I believe in the sacredness of life. We are all created in God’s image and the state should not be empowered to take people’s lives.

Gov. Newsom should commute the sentences of everyone on California’s death row and redirect the state’s resources toward programs that actually make communities safer: mental health services, effective violence prevention and support for victims and survivors.

More than 500 people remain on death row, and two-thirds have been there for more than 20 years. Dozens of these men and women have spent more than four decades awaiting execution. Meanwhile, California has struggled for years to provide adequate attorneys for people challenging their convictions and sentences.

This is not fiscal responsibility. It is not public safety. And it is not justice.

California has already demonstrated that it can protect the public without carrying out executions: No one has been executed here in nearly 21 years.

Newsom should acknowledge what the numbers make clear. The death penalty is an extraordinarily expensive government program that does not make Californians safer. Commuting these sentences would allow California to invest instead in the people and programs that do.

Rabbi Suzanne Singer, Riverside

October 14, 2026 – By Anita Chabria

With not-terrible odds heading into the 2028 Democratic primaries, Gov. Gavin Newsom is getting one shared warning whispered in his ear by roughly 3,729 political consultants right now: Do not mess with the murderers.

Do not, under any circumstance, follow that inner voice that may be telling you to commute the death sentences of the 563 killers on California’s death row to life without parole, as Newsom recently admitted he was considering. Doing so would be a stupid move for an Oval Office wannabe, one already hobbled by the progressive persona of the Golden State.

“I’m getting all those people in my ear,” Newsom said during a podcast conversation with Bryan Stevenson, one of the preeminent death penalty lawyers in the country. “Don’t do it. Politics.”

Newsom already dismantled San Quentin’s execution chamber a few years ago, so the state can’t kill people even if it wanted to. But the governor has made it clear that he opposes the death penalty in principle because every year the evidence mounts that its implementation is flawed and racially biased. As he put it, the decision on commuting the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere may be his “rocking chair test,” a measure of whether he will have lived up to his own ideals when he looks back on his life.

Most other western countries have already banned the death penalty, leaving the U.S. in the company of places including North Korea and Libya when it comes to this punishment. Twenty-three states have abolished it, and three besides California have a moratorium. Nine governors over the years have commuted their entire death row, including one Republican. In 2024, on his way out of office, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 federal prisoners, in part, Stevenson said, to prevent the Trump administration from using executions as theater.

But none of that is why Newsom should do it.

He should do it because we, the voters, are exhausted by the venality of politicians whose every move is controlled by politics and self-dealing. We need to believe that conscience is not a relic of America’s past, and roll reality back to a time when, occasionally, leaders acted because they believed in something, even if it wasn’t popular.

He should do it because our president glorifies violence and death (more on that in a moment) and people need a reminder that the America of hope and dreams, the America that always strives to be better, may be down, but she’s not out.

He should do it simply because he thinks it’s right.

“A lot of people in this country want a leader who is not trying to promote themselves, who’s not trying to advance themselves, is not always scheming for the angles and the corners,” Stevenson told me. “That’s not trying to just do what makes them get the most votes.”

Showing mercy to murderers historically has not been popular with voters. The tale of Willie Horton, the convicted murderer whose subsequent felonies tanked the 1988 presidential ambitions of then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, is still invoked like a Biblical lesson about the sin of soft-on-crime.

Horton’s warning happened during what now seems like the benign and civilized days of the President George H.W. Bush era, though. This moment is different, and all the advice about dodging this dodgy issue is now wrong.

America is increasingly in the death business, to steal a phrase from the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun — or at least our leaders are. Under the Trump administration, brutality, cruelty, corruption and even killings are being used as misguided and ugly proxies for strength and power. Fear is a weapon, death the point — the state can kill you if you make its leaders mad.

“It’s a handful of people whose view of the social order is very violent. It uses power. It abuses power. They think death is good for demonstrating strength,” Stevenson said.

Think that sounds overblown?

Just ask the family of Renee Good. Or Alex Pretti. Both Americans were killed by masked federal officers only 10 months ago. But so many other deaths have happened since then, they’re just ghosts in our collective psyche — haunting reminders that faceless, nameless agents are now empowered to roam our streets.

Most of us can no longer place the name Nurul Amin Shah Alam, the near-blind Rohingya refugee dumped by federal agents in the freezing cold on a February night. He was found dead five days later, his passing ruled a homicide.

Do you remember Lorenzo Salgado Araujo? Or Johan Sebastián Duran Guerrero? That’s what the business of death does, normalizes killings until they blend and fade in significance.

What about the 120 Iranian children, many of them little girls, who were killed when the U.S. bombed their school?

Then there are the roughly 238 people who have been executed by U.S. bombings of boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, allegedly while transporting drugs, though the killings took place with no arrests, no trials and no real evidence. Four of those killings happened in October, though they barely made news.

And there is the profiteering from death — the talk of resorts on the shores of Gaza, the government money saved by Elon Musk cutting off aid to starving children.

Now, if Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has his way, a year that began with televised footage of the death of Good and Pretti will end with the live-streamed execution of Nidal Hasan, the paralyzed, wheelchair-using former Army psychiatrist who 17 years ago killed 13 and wounded 32 at Fort Hood in Texas. If the grotesque spectacle happens, it will be a throwback to the days of the Roman Colosseum when the business of state-sponsored death was at an apex, combining public violence with propaganda, politics and social control.

Stevenson warns that “we’re in the midst of a narrative struggle, and this struggle is for the soul of America.”

Newsom has the chance to, if not change that narrative, offer an alternative one — an America that rejects killing as the ultimate display of power. An America that seeks justice with dignity and wisdom, not arrogance and gore. An America that feels safe because our leaders act with integrity and honor, not with a slavish, intemperate ego.

Though there is a political risk inherent in striking out in a solitary direction, there can also be reward. As Stevenson told Newsom, that’s the “beauty of struggling for things that are right, struggling for things that are moral, struggling for things that are just — all kinds of people will come along, and when you feel like you just can’t take another step, there’ll be something there. There’ll be somebody there.”

My mercy isn’t for those on our death row, many of whom are guilty of gut-churning crimes. I’m not arguing that they are victims themselves, or even that some may have been unfairly tried, or even innocent, though that may be true. I acknowledge some families of victims may be angry if Newsom commutes sentences, though some will not.

My mercy is reserved for America, and those who are exhausted by the business of death, this business Trump wants us to believe is just American business — necessary and unavoidable.

A commutation of California’s death row sentences would be a rejection of Trump’s manic desire to pull us ever lower; a rejection of our growing cynicism that there is no such thing — Republican or Democrat — as a leader who acts from conscience. An assurance, instead, that it is still possible to heed an internal moral compass that is more powerful than the need for power.

Would voters really reject the leader who offered that? Would you?

Anita Chabria is a California columnist for the Los Angeles Times, based in Sacramento. Before joining The Times, she worked for the Sacramento Bee as a member of its statewide investigative team and previously covered criminal justice and City Hall. Follow her on Bluesky at anitachabria.bsky.social and on X at @anitachabria.

October 12, 2026 – By Austin Sarat

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has a chance to make history by commuting all death sentences in his state. He can and should do so by sparing the lives of the 563 California prisoners on death row.

Such an act would be the single most significant anti-death penalty act in all of American history. Never before has a political leader had the chance to save as many lives of people awaiting execution.

Coming at a moment when the nation’s attention is fixed on the cruelty of capital punishment, a mass commutation of the nation’s largest death row population would be a lightning bolt. It would be wind in the sails of abolitionists and provide political cover for governors in other death penalty states to empty their death rows.

And Newsom can solidify his already substantial standing as a leading voice against capital punishment without damaging his political prospects should he decide to run for president.

To get a sense of the magnitude and significance of a mass commutation in California, consider the following. Over the last two decades, 11 states have abolished the death penalty: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Virginia and Washington. In all of those states combined, the total death row population at the time of abolition was 69.

Or consider that to this point in American history, the largest mass clemency for people sentenced to death occurred as a result of the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia, which invalidated the death sentences of 629 people who had been sentenced under constitutionally defective laws. 

In 2003, Illinois Gov. George Ryan (R) emptied his state’s death row by granting clemency to 167 people. And just before leaving office, President Biden commuted 37 death sentences to life in prison without parole.

While California currently has a moratorium on executions and has not executed a prisoner in 20 years, if Newsom issues a universal clemency in California, that single gesture would reduce the number of people on death row in the entire country by one-fourth.

In the Golden State, the path for such a clemency is complicated. As The New York Times explains, “Under California law, a governor can unilaterally grant clemency to a prisoner with a single conviction, but the State Supreme Court must approve a clemency request for inmates with multiple felony convictions.” However, whatever that court might do, Newsom could still spare the lives of more people than any other governor or president ever has.

The governor has been a persistent and outspoken critic of capital punishment. Newsom says that “The intentional killing of another person is wrong and … our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure.” But news reports suggest that Newsom is weighing the impact a universal clemency might have on his campaign if he decides to run for president. 

The evidence suggests it would not significantly damage his political prospects.

During the 2020 presidential nominating campaign, almost every candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination opposed the death penalty, and in the run-up to the election that fall, Joe Biden was open about his opposition to capital punishment. 

Today, while a slim majority of the American public supports the death penalty, most Americans recognize the serious flaws in the death penalty system.

And if the result of the 2028 campaign were to depend on the results in so-called swing states, many of them would seem to be fertile ground for a candidate with a record of opposition to the death penalty. Two of those seven states (Michigan and Wisconsin) abolished capital punishment a long time ago.

Like California, Pennsylvania has a moratorium on executions currently in place and hasn’t executed anyone since 1999. Its governor, Josh Shapiro (D), opposes the death penalty and has called on the legislature to abolish it. He remains one of the most popular governors in the country.

The death penalty in North Carolina is on hold because of pending court challenges and has not executed anyone in two decades. Though he is not an abolitionist, former governor and current candidate for the U.S. Senate, Roy Cooper (D), commuted the death sentences of 15 people.

Like North Carolina, Nevada has the death penalty on the books but hasn’t executed anyone since 2006.

That leaves two of the swing states, Arizona and Georgia, where the death penalty is still legal and where executions have been carried out recently. 

But in Georgia, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) has been an outspoken opponent of capital punishment, calling it “The final failsafe of white supremacy.” He still managed to win his seat in Congress.

Finally, in Arizona, public support for the death penalty has declined in recent years, as have the number of new death sentences being imposed in the state.

All of this suggests that Newsom has room to maneuver as he considers whether to follow his conscience and use his clemency power to deliver a devastating blow to America’s death penalty system. Should he do so, he will vindicate the hopes that the late Pope Francis expressed when Newsom visited him in 2024.

As The New York Times notes, when he saw Newsom, the Pope “flashed a thumbs up” and dubbed the governor his “’death penalty man.’”

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

August 16, 2026 – By Nadia Daar

During the 49 years since Amnesty International started campaigning against the death penalty, more than 110 countries have outlawed this inhumane practice. Year after year, however, the United States is among a handful of countries that continue to use it. In 2025, the U.S. had the fifth-highest number of executions in the world, after China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. It is the only executioner in the Americas.  

Shockingly, 25% of those on death row in the U.S. are sitting in California prisons. 

I’m the executive director of Amnesty International USA, and last month, I met with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s team to discuss how he can leave a legacy when it comes to ending the use of this inhumane punishment. 

California has not executed anybody in two decades, and Newsom issued a moratorium on executions in 2019, but the state still has the largest death row in the entire nation with more than 550 people. In fact, with the simple snap of his fingers, the next governor could resume executions. For that reason, Newsom should seize a historic opportunity to move California closer to ending the death penalty by commuting all of the death sentences in the state. But his time is running out.  

Newsom has always been forthcoming about his position against this cruel punishment. When he imposed the moratorium on executions, he called California’s death penalty system unfair and discriminatory. He was right.

This archaic punishment is marked by racial discrimination, being disproportionately imposed against communities of color. According to a recent study, Black people are up to 8.7 times as likely to be sentenced to death as similarly situated non-Black defendants, Latino people are up to 6.2 times as likely to be sentenced to death, and defendants of all races are up to 8.8 times as likely to be condemned to death when at least one of the victims in the case is white. 

The death penalty is also disproportionately imposed on people with mental and intellectual disabilities. According to the figures in the death penalty report of the state Committee on the Revision of the Penal Code, one third of individuals held on death row as of 2021 were being treated for severe mental disabilities. 

And capital punishment comes with staggering costs for taxpayers. A 2011 study by San Francisco U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell estimated that California taxpayers spent more than $4 billion since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978, and estimated the annual cost of pursuing executions to be $184 million more than pursuing life without parole.

The bottom line is that the use of the death penalty runs the irreversible risk of executing innocent people. Shujaa Graham was wrongly convicted of the murder of a prison guard during a protest and sentenced to death in 1976. He spent five years on death row in California before being acquitted of the crime. After his exoneration, he told a reporter: “Each and every day that I wake up, death row is the first thing on my mind. I can look at my children and look at my wife and say what if California would’ve had their way, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Newsom did the right thing with his moratorium, but his order was always temporary. The fact remains that his promise to pause executions is only good until he leaves office in 2027. What he does next will determine whether California merely delayed executions or truly ended them for the people currently on death row.  

Before he leaves, Newsom can act to commute every death sentence in California. Doing so would not free anyone from prison, but it would completely remove the inhumane threat for those with a death sentence, rather than simply delay it. This decision would solidify Newsom’s position as a leader against capital punishment, and the significance would extend far beyond California. 

Last week, Amnesty International joined more than 40 other international organizations in sending Newsom a letter asking him to commute all death sentences in the state. 

According to our latest annual report, only 17 countries carried out executions in 2025. Meanwhile, in 2025, executions in the U.S. climbed to their highest level since 2009. With Newsom’s leadership, California can represent a different path: one that acknowledges the death penalty as a failed and archaic policy rather than a false symbol of justice. 

California, especially under Newsom, often positions itself as a national leader on criminal justice reform, from sentencing reform to prison conditions to reentry initiatives. Ending the existing death sentences once and for all would be among the most consequential acts of executive leadership in modern state history. It would impact more than a quarter of all people currently on death row in the entire United States and could fundamentally reshape the national conversation around capital punishment. 

Importantly, the governor does not need to wait for the legislature or a statewide ballot initiative. California law already gives him clemency authority. In about 40% of cases, he has the power to commute their sentences directly. In others, he can seek approval from the California Supreme Court. The pathway exists. What remains uncertain is whether the political will exists. 

If Newsom allows these death sentences to remain in place, the future of hundreds of lives will depend on whoever occupies the governor’s office next and whether he chooses to revive executions after years of dormancy. The risk could return overnight on Jan. 4, 2027, setting California and the U.S. on a devastating trajectory for human rights. 

But if Newsom acts now, California could become the clearest example yet that the United States is capable of moving beyond the use of this outdated, cruel and inhumane punishment. 

Nadia Daar is the executive director of Amnesty International USA.

July 25, 2026 – By Michael Pappas

For generations, California has understood itself as a place willing to wrestle with hard questions, especially when human dignity is at stake. By commuting California’s death sentences to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, Gov. Gavin Newsom could reject capital punishment as incompatible with human dignity.

California has never claimed moral perfection, but we have shown a capacity to reflect, grow and bring our policies closer to our values. Few issues ask us to do that work as clearly as the death penalty, and few policies have failed California as profoundly as capital punishment.

Over many years as executive director of the San Francisco Interfaith Council, I have talked with people who know violence up close: Families who have lost loved ones; communities carrying trauma; and people navigating incarceration, despair and grief. For them, values are not theoretical. Human dignity, human rights and equal justice are not slogans. They are the difference between harm that compounds and harm that begins to heal.

Today, approximately 560 people face execution in California. Ours is the largest death row in the nation and one of the largest in the world. Two-thirds of those individuals have been on death row for more than 20 years, and some for over 40. These delays are the result of a system unable to meet its own obligations, particularly the provision of counsel for capital appeals. That produces generations of uncertainty and does not offer justice to anyone involved.

Survivors and families have been trapped in a process that stretches grief across decades, reopening wounds rather than allowing them to heal. Accountability matters deeply to survivors. But accountability that is endlessly deferred, arbitrarily applied and disconnected from healing does not bring the peace people seek.

In 2019, when Newsom ordered a moratorium on executions, he acknowledged that California’s “death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure.”

“It has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or can’t afford expensive legal representation,” the governor said, declaring that capital punishment “has provided no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent” and “has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars.”

In the last seven years, substantiation of these failures has only increased. For example, Stanford Professor John Donohue, economist, law professor and one of the nation’s leading empirical researchers on capital punishment, recently evaluated multiple studies of California’s death penalty and confirmed that evidence of racial bias in its implementation is “powerful and compelling.”

Newsom’s moratorium on executions, the dismantling of the death chamber and the closure of death row facilities were meaningful acts of leadership acknowledging these intractable problems. Now, the governor should grant universal clemency and commute all California death sentences, bringing these cases into alignment with the moral direction our state has taken on other human rights issues, such as the protection of immigrant communities.

This act would acknowledge that the system’s problems are not isolated or fixable at the margins, and that responding to systemic injustice requires a response at scale.

Since the governor imposed the moratorium, many Californians believe the death penalty has ended. As it stands, we are living in the space between recognition and resolution. Now it is time for the governor to finish the job by commuting death row sentences to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. This act would serve as a beacon to guide the rest of the nation on a similar path.

Michael Pappas is executive director of the San Francisco Interfaith Council.

March 13, 2026 – By the Editorial Board.

The use of the death penalty has risen sharply in the United States, with more executions in 2025 than any year since 2009. It is a cruel and unjust development.

In theory, the death penalty is reserved for “the worst of the worst.” In practice, it is very different. People who are executed for their crimes are disproportionately poor or intellectually disabled and often lacked good lawyers. They are also more likely to be sentenced to death if they have been convicted of killing a white person.

Anthony Boyd, who maintained his innocence until Alabama executed him last year at age 54, had an inexperienced court-appointed lawyer and was convicted on disputed eyewitness testimony. Charles Flores, 56, has spent 27 years on death row in Texas for a murder conviction based solely on unreliable testimony from a hypnotized witness. Robert Roberson, who has autism, remains on death row there despite having been convicted on now-debunked evidence that he had shaken his daughter to death.

Adding to the injustice, executions often go awry and become a grisly spectacle. As Alabama administered nitrous gas to kill Mr. Boyd, he violently thrashed and drew agonized breaths for 30 minutes.

The death penalty is a fraught subject because most people on death row are guilty of murder and deserve tough punishment. But a life sentence without parole is a tough punishment. And the death penalty is both unavoidably flawed and unworthy of a decent society. As long it exists, it will disproportionately spare criminals with more resources and be used against people who are poor, mentally disabled or otherwise vulnerable.

Much of the world has come to this same conclusion. The list of countries that have abolished or effectively ended the death penalty includes all of Western Europe, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Morocco, South Africa and Australia. By continuing to execute people regularly, the United States puts itself in the company of only about 20 countries, among them Afghanistan, China, Iran and North Korea.

Over the past year, the United States has become even more of an outlier among democracies because the states that still conduct executions have accelerated the pace. Many of these states have in recent years passed secrecy laws to hide the details of what they are doing. We urge Americans not to look away.

In the initial years of the 21st century, more Americans recognized the flaws with the death penalty, and its use fell sharply. Opponents highlighted a wave of DNA-related exonerations, including of more than 20 people who were cleared after having spent time on death row.

More than 200 people on death row have been exonerated since 1973.

Botched executions played a role too. After death-penalty opponents pressured some pharmaceutical companies into stopping the sale of lethal-injection drugs, states resorted to less reliable workarounds that led to gruesome scenes in execution chambers. Many doctors refused to participate, and amateurs filled the gap, sometimes administering lethal drugs improperly and causing prolonged suffering. Those cases contributed to public discomfort.

Political leaders from both parties responded to the growing recognition of the death penalty’s barbaric and arbitrary nature. In 2003, George Ryan, then the Republican governor of Illinois, issued a blanket commutation to death row inmates, citing “a shameless record of convicting innocent people.” Democrats went further, all but abandoning the practice in states they governed. Virginia, which executed 65 people in the 1990s, abolished the death penalty in 2021. The federal government contributed to the slowdown, too. It executed nobody during George W. Bush’s second term and both of Barack Obama’s terms.

But popular support for the death penalty has never disappeared, despite the injustices. The last time that voters rejected it in a ballot referendum was in Oregon in 1964. Twenty states continued to put people to death in the 2010s.

The recent surge in executions has four main causes.

First, almost all states that have executed someone since 2012 have passed secrecy laws, allowing them to obscure the cruelty of executions. Indiana, for example, now blocks reporters from witnessing executions. Other laws allow states to hide the details of their shady efforts to buy lethal injection drugs. Consider that, in 2012, Idaho officials reportedly set up a meeting in a parking lot where they traded a suitcase of cash for lethal-injection drugs. The new laws try to minimize public backlash to wildly inappropriate practices.

Second, states have begun to seek alternatives for lethal injections, given the drugs’ cost and their unreliable supply. Last year, South Carolina executed three prisoners by firing squad. Yet this method, too, can go badly. In April, a firing squad’s bullets reportedly missed their intended target over the heart of Mikal Mahdi, and he cried out, groaned and gave labored breaths for more than a minute until his last gasp.

Third, today’s conservative Supreme Court is often indifferent to the horrors of the death penalty. From the 1980s through early 2000s, the court issued several decisions that effectively restricted its use, including bans on the death penalty for children and the intellectually disabled. Since 2020, with a more conservative majority, the court has gone in the other direction. The justices have made it harder for some defendants to introduce new evidence and have quickly, and often without explanation, rejected lower courts’ requests to pause executions. The court has prioritized expediency over justice and made it more likely that the government will kill innocent people.

Finally there is President Trump. He has been enthusiastic about the death penalty since he was a tabloid figure in the 1980s. Since entering politics a decade ago, he has suggested it was an appropriate punishment even for drug dealers. His support has led the Republican Party to embrace the practice again. Shortly after returning to office last year, he signed an executive order encouraging states to pursue capital charges.

Florida embodies the recent changes. Last year, it executed 19 people; the state’s previous high in the modern era had been eight, in 2014. Florida’s laws are unusual in giving the governor broad control over who on death row should be executed, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has used that authority. This year, he has already signed five death warrants.

Last year, Mr. DeSantis signed a law that mandates the death penalty for undocumented immigrants who commit capital crimes, despite its apparent violation of a 1987 Supreme Court ruling prohibiting automatic death sentences for any category of crime. What is the name of this new law? The TRUMP Act.

This editorial board has long argued for the abolition of the death penalty. It is a form of institutionalized vengeance that causes a society to mimic the behavior of its worst offenders. It does not deter crime more than life imprisonment, studies show. These are the reasons that so much of the world no longer executes people.

This week has brought a rare recent piece of good news in the United States. On Tuesday, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama commuted the death sentence of Charles Burton, 75, who was involved in a 1991 robbery but was no longer on the scene when one of his accomplices shot and killed a man. He was set to be executed on Thursday. Ms. Ivey made the right decision, but it should not require a wave of media attention and public outcry to secure last-minute justice in every flawed case.

In the absence of abolition, this country should at least take steps to reduce the worst injustices of the death penalty. The chances that an innocent person will be executed remain far too high. People on death row should have every opportunity to present evidence that calls into question their conviction.

In its current term, the Supreme Court is hearing a case involving protections against executing intellectually disabled Americans, who are at greater risk of falsely confessing and often struggle to defend themselves in court. We hope the justices uphold those protections. We also believe that the court should continue to prevent states from imposing the death penalty for crimes other than murder, a ruling it made in 2008 and that Mr. DeSantis has challenged.

Finally, states should repeal their secrecy laws and allow the public to confront the grim reality of executions. That so many states would rather hide this truth offers one reason for hope during a dark new period of executions in the United States. Even many of the politicians who support the death penalty seem to grasp that it is indefensible.

July 25, 2025 – By Matthew Stepka.

California should get rid of death row altogether and, instead, commute every death sentence in the state to life without the possibility of parole.

When Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on executions in California in 2019, he called our state’s death penalty “by all measures, a failure.” Six years later, his estimation still holds true: Last year alone, California became home to the 200th death row exoneration in modern U.S. death penalty history, and a series of state and federal court cases peeled apart the state’s constant and flagrant racial bias in death sentencing.

As an executive and investor, I find it unthinkable that we continue to pour public resources into such a fundamentally broken system. If any company or product I evaluated had an error rate comparable to the death penalty — where for every eight people executed, one person has been exonerated — I would never invest.

Yet California takes the opposite approach, investing tens of millions of dollars each year, racking up enough death sentences to give us the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere, despite not executing anyone for almost two decades. A recent analysis by The Sacramento Bee estimates that California death penalty prosecutions in the last five years alone have led to court costs of more than $300 million, all while Newsom’s execution moratorium has been in place.

Because death penalty cases are more complex and can last more than four times longer than non-capital cases, this significantly increases legal expenses — from juror and attorney compensation to court personnel and other related costs. In fact, the Conference of Chief Justices estimated that individuals on California’s death row who require court-appointed counsel would cost the state more than $600 million.

All this expenditure is going toward a system that’s not only practically nonfunctional, it’s also unfit for its purpose. Despite death penalty proponents arguing its deterrent effect on crime, states with the death penalty consistently report higher murder rates than those without. In reality, capital punishment diverts valuable taxpayer resources from priorities like education, mental healthcare, child abuse prevention and infrastructure — areas vital for economic growth, societal well-being and, yes, public safety.

The message this sends to businesses and investors is troubling. California, now the world’s fourth largest economy, should be a beacon of innovation, efficiency and good governance. Instead, our commitment to a broken death penalty system suggests a preference for arbitrary decision-making over evidence-based policy, reckless spending over fiscal prudence and state-sanctioned retribution over fairness and justice.

It is contradictions like these that have led over 500 business leaders around the world, including myself, to sign a declaration advocating for the worldwide abolition of the death penalty.

To be sure, Newsom has already made great strides in this direction during his tenure, signing laws addressing racial bias in California’s death penalty and creating protections for people with intellectual disabilities. The governor has even taken steps to dismantle San Quentin’s death row by moving people with death sentences into general prison populations throughout the state.

But we can’t ignore the unfortunate reality that moratoriums can be undone, death rows can be repopulated and executions can resume. We’re seeing it happen right now: Earlier this spring, Louisiana undid a 15-year execution hiatus and restarted the machinery of death. South Carolina did the same last year. If California were to undergo a similar shift, many of the nearly 600 people on death row would instantly be at risk of execution, regardless of everything we know about the unreliability and bias of death sentencing in our state.

Newsom has the power to erase the risk of California someday backsliding into executions by taking steps to commute every death sentence in the state to life without the possibility of parole. Just weeks ago, local and national civil rights leaders gathered at the state Capitol to deliver a statement signed by nearly 200 organizations urging the governor to use his constitutional authority to do exactly that.

There is precedent for this: More than half a dozen governors have granted universal clemency to everyone sentenced to death in their states. And last December, then-President Joe Biden and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper collectively commuted over 50 sentences within their respective jurisdictions before leaving office.

Life sentences work: they cost less than executions, keep communities safe and prevent the killing of people who were unfairly and wrongfully sentenced.

Matthew Stepka is founder and managing partner at Machina Ventures, an investment firm focused on early stage, artificial intelligence and data science enabled companies. He is also a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

January 22, 2026 – By CARRIE HARAMBASIC.

Capitol Weekly welcomes Opinions on California public policy or politics. Please read our guidelines for opinion pieces before submitting an Op-Ed. Submissions that do not adhere to our guidelines will not be considered for publication. 

OPINION – Lush Cosmetics has launched a campaign at our 35 California locations calling on Governor Gavin Newsom to commute all death sentences. From January 9 – 20, every store is featuring a window display and in-store materials to educate our customers on how to voice their support.

Some may wonder why a beauty company would take on an issue such as the death penalty. Those people don’t know Lush.

Since 2006, we have been campaigning online and in our shop windows, tackling human rights, environmental justice, and animal protection issues that most brands would find too controversial to take on. Campaigning is a core value of our business, and an integral part of the ethics that make Lush, Lush.

Our advocacy against capital punishment goes back almost a decade. In 2017, our Death ≠ Justice campaign raised awareness about the failures of the death penalty, especially the risk of executing innocent people. Through the sales of the limited edition 31 States Bath Bomb, named for the number of states which had the death penalty in place at the time, we raised $132,000 for national abolition efforts. We also released a documentary, Exonerated, about Kwame Ajamu, an innocent man who spent 28 years on Ohio’s death row for a crime he didn’t commit.

Understanding Lush’s history of standing against the death penalty makes it clear why we’re speaking out now. Governor Newsom, in his last year in office, has a historic opportunity to clear California’s death row — the largest death row in the U.S. – and cement the anti-death penalty legacy he has built throughout his years representing Californians. We firmly believe he cannot let this moment slip away.

It’s clear to us that the death penalty doesn’t address the root causes of crime and that we need systemic solutions across the justice system in order to create safer communities. Nationwide, the death penalty is deeply flawed. Evidence shows that executions frequently go wrong, causing immense and prolonged suffering, with Black people 220% more likely to suffer botched executions than white people. It is applied unfairly and in a racially biased manner, harmful to nearly everyone who is touched by it — including many victims’ families — rampant with wrongful convictions, and wasteful of precious taxpayer resources.

California’s death penalty is no exception. Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1977, eight Californians who had been sentenced to death have been exonerated and released from death row because they were innocent. All of them were men of color.

It has been consistently shown that the death penalty can be more expensive than life terms. By commuting all death sentences, Governor Newsom can make available hundreds of millions of dollars that could instead be invested in communities to build public safety strategies that meet their needs, solve scores of other cases, and provide critical services to care for the victims of violence and their families.

Thankfully, there has been significant progress towards abolition in California. Much of this is in part thanks to Governor Newsom, who issued a statewide moratorium on executions in 2019, subsequently dismantled California’s death chamber, and ultimately relocated its death row residents to general population units throughout the state.

These are applaudable acts of leadership — and Lush was among many business voices to publicly give our support — but this progress is not irreversible. The fact is as long as people remain under a death sentence, the threat of execution never fully disappears.

Now, by commuting every death sentence to life without the possibility of parole, Governor Newsom can ensure that no future administration can undo the progress already made, all while demonstrating the moral courage and political leadership needed to reinvigorate momentum towards ending the death penalty nationwide.

Lush is proud to join the growing coalition of activists and community leaders across the state calling on the Governor to act. We echo fellow business leaders like Sir Richard Branson and Matthew Stepka — members of the global Business Leaders Against the Death Penalty campaign, which Lush is proud to be a part of — who have already voiced their support.

But what matters most to us at Lush is that, with our state-wide campaign, we’re now joined by our customers across California — thousands of people who share our passion for building a better world. Together, we call on Governor Newsom to do the right thing: commute California death sentences and secure the legacy of fairness and justice already set in motion.

Carrie Harambasic is the Head of Business Development for Lush North America.

March 13, 2026 – By Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy.

For centuries, Catholics have prayed the Stations of the Cross throughout Lent. 

This solemn Christian season and particular prayer practice prepare our hearts and mind to journey with Christ through the desert and from his death to his Resurrection. 

But as we venerate the cross and walk the Via Crucis, do we pause to notice that the death we commemorate is a state-sanctioned death, not unlike the executions that are still carried out across the United States?

Reflecting on Christ’s own execution reminds us that this kind of violence and suffering did not end at Calvary but continues in the system of capital punishment today. Venerating the cross invites us to confront the violence we find in our time.

And we are compelled to act.

In this Lenten spirit, I urge California Gov. Gavin Newsom to commute the sentences of the more than 500 men and women sentenced to death in California, changing their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Doing so would complete Newsom’s important efforts to dismantle the system of capital punishment in the state. Most importantly, such a courageous act would definitively save the lives of hundreds of individuals.

Every step of Christ’s Passion invites us, here and now, to reckon with the inequities and injustices built into our modern system of capital punishment. In California, which has held the largest death row in the country for decades, many of the men and women sentenced to die do not even have lawyers assigned to advocate for them. An inordinate number of those people on death row have intellectual disabilities, serious mental illness, or find themselves victims of a racially biased system. 

This immoral system also ensnares the innocent. As of February, 202 people — including eight in California — have been exonerated from America’s death rows. The death penalty is a fatally flawed system. And we believe that no matter the harm one has caused or suffered, every person deserves to be treated with human dignity.

Though needles and gurneys replace the nails and thorns of Jesus’ time, capital punishment today is no less cruel or barbaric than what we witness on Calvary.

It is true that Newsom holds some public policy positions that are at odds with church teaching. However, on the issue of the death penalty, his stance falls consistently in line with clear Catholic teaching. In fact, in 2018 Pope Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church, asserting “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” 

I recall vividly when Newsom, early in his tenure seven years ago, suspended the death penalty in California. On March 13, 2019, he signed an executive order which placed a welcome moratorium on state executions, and I remember seeing pictures in the newspaper of prison officials physically removing the death chamber. In 2022, Newsom helped to establish a process for death row inmates to receive relief from convictions or death sentences obtained “on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin.” And in 2023, Newsom dismantled the physical death row at San Quentin and began the process of reintegrating these individuals into general prison populations throughout the state. Today, the infamous prison which housed the largest death row in the country is a facility dedicated to restoration, healing and rehabilitation.

So long as these more than 500 death sentences exist, lives remain at risk and in the hands of a future administration. 

Newsom’s efforts to turn away from the death penalty have been praised and supported by the Catholic Church — including people in the pews; to national groups like my own organization, Catholic Mobilizing Network; to the Catholic bishops of California; and all the way up to the Vatican. 

Newsom’s actions on capital punishment have demonstrated how justice can be rooted in mercy and restoration instead of death and retribution. This is the restoration realized on Easter Sunday, triumphing over the vengeance on display on Good Friday.

Newsom has made strides in advancing this kind of restoration regarding the death penalty in the state of California. But so long as these more than 500 death sentences exist, lives remain at risk and in the hands of a future administration. 

Some may think California will never return to executions. We once thought that was true of the federal government, but we were proved wrong. While the California death chamber was dismantled, San Quentin continues to be legally designated as the site for executions. Its execution equipment may be considered a vestige of the past, but, in fact, it sits in the basement, waiting for the day it may be used. As long as people are sentenced to death in California, they remain at risk of execution because of changing political winds. 

In this Lenten season I wonder: Will Newsom tolerate this injustice as Pontius Pilate did and wash his hands of the issue, doing nothing more than what is required of him? Or will he take another courageous step and boldly act with executive authority to save the lives of hundreds of people? 

A choice lies before him. He can remain in the death of Good Friday, or he can continue the good work he’s already done, and take steps toward the restoration of Easter Sunday. On this Lenten journey, I pray that Newsom chooses the latter.

Jesus himself teaches us to embrace compassion, forgiveness, and love over vengeance. On the road to Calvary, Jesus shows us what it looks like to “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). The final words he leaves us with are, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

When we walk in Jesus’ footsteps in the Way of the Cross this Lent, we have the chance to learn from his example and do our part to contribute to the end of state-sanctioned death in our time.

Newsom has an opportunity to lead with mercy. I encourage him to act soon.