Newsom Considers Commuting Death Row Sentences

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Mina Kim (0:41)

Welcome to Forum, I'm Mina Kim. With 563 prisoners on death row, California has a quarter of the nation's population sentenced to death. And Governor Gavin Newsom is facing pressure to address this before he leaves office.

In 2019, Newsom put a moratorium on executions, in part, he said then, out of concern over wrongful convictions.

Gavin Newsom (1:05)

I can't be party to that. I won't be able to sleep at night.

Mina Kim (1:08)

Now advocates want him to commute those death sentences as he prepares to step down in January. Here he is on his podcast this month.

Gavin Newsom (1:17)

I have to prepare for my own consciousness, my rocking chair test. Do I commute the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere?

Mina Kim (1:27)

For more, I'm joined by Maurice Chammah, writer at The Marshall Project. Welcome Maurice.

Maurice Chammah (1:32)

Hi, thanks for having me.

Mina Kim (1:34)

So what would it mean if Newsom did this? I mean, I imagine it would not mean that suddenly 563 people are released from prison.

Maurice Chammah (1:43)

No, absolutely not. And in fact, people who were, all these folks who were previously on death row in California some years ago, were transferred to the general population. So they're effectively living at their lives in prison already. And that's what they would continue to do if their sentences were commuted.

So they would all get presumably life sentences without the possibility of parole. But they would no longer be under the threat of execution under a future governor.

Mina Kim (2:10)

So why would Newsom do this now? Why would it make sense for him to do this now?

Maurice Chammah (2:14)

Well, he said that it has to do with his own sense of morality. I mean, he's about to leave office and leave the governorship. And so it's sort of his last chance to take this major swing against the death penalty, which is a policy area where he's been very clear for pretty much his entire time in office.

So this would be the chance basically to land that blow against the punishment before he leaves. But of course, also there are the political pros he could maybe get out of it as he prepares to run, as we all kind of imagine he will for president.

Mina Kim (2:46)

Yes, the political pros. I imagine also political cons to this.

Maurice Chammah (2:50)

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the attack ads really write themselves. You can imagine a Republican running against him saying, look at all these people who a jury sentenced to death, who the people of California wanted to see executed and Newsom deprived them of that chance.

Mina Kim (3:04)

Could he do this with just a stroke of a pen in California?

Maurice Chammah (3:08)

He can't. He can do it for over a hundred of these people. But California has some quirks in its laws such that the California Supreme Court would actually have to approve all of these commutations, you know, make sure that there's no conflict of interest, the way that you hear about in Washington with the president. But the folks that I've talked to in my reporting suggests that that is likely to happen. So if Newsom goes for it, you know, he can expect the court to hopefully play along.

Mina Kim (3:37)

Yeah. And will he, I guess, is the question. You noted sort of his moral convictions on this or his personal convictions, as he stated them. But what is his history on this issue? What has he done?

Maurice Chammah (3:49)

Well, in the last month, he has apparently told some people close to him, according to reporting by the New York Times, that he's considering doing it explicitly.

And that didn't surprise me because really his whole time in office, he has pushed against the death penalty. So right after he came into office, about eight years ago, he declared a moratorium on executions, which meant that people were still on death row, still technically could do this execution, but he actually had the execution chamber at San Quentin Prison outside San Francisco ripped down, basically. There were these photos of like a lethal injection gurney and a chair that had been in a gas chamber, literally being hoisted onto trucks and driven away. And so the symbolism of that was quite clear.