When he was elected to lead California eight years ago, Gavin Newsom quickly established himself as the most anti-death-penalty governor in the state’s history.
He issued California’s first moratorium on executions, dismantled the state’s death chamber and repealed its lethal injection protocol.
But with his time as governor coming to a close, Newsom is wrestling with taking a much larger step: commuting the death sentences of the 563 prisoners California says it has on death row.
The possibility that Newsom could eliminate every capital sentence in California — which is home to almost a quarter of all death row prisoners in the United States — has reverberated across the state, spurring intense debates and lobbying from those who support and oppose capital punishment.
People in favor of commutation point to racial disparities in death penalty sentences, concerns about wrongful convictions and the high cost of maintaining death row, while those opposed to the move say it would usurp justice for victim families.
An act of sweeping clemency from Newsom, who is term limited and thought to be weighing a presidential bid in 2028, would probably replace the death sentences with life in prison without parole — and spark legal challenges.
Last month, Newsom volunteered that he was considering mass commutations during a conversation on his podcast with Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson.
“I have to prepare for my own conscience, my rocking chair test,” Newsom said. “Do I commute the largest death row in the western hemisphere?”
“I think you do,” Stevenson answered, “and I think it becomes a really pivotal moment in this country.”
During the conversation, Newsom said he had “all these people” in his ear telling him not to grant a mass commutation because of the politics. But the more difficult hurdle, he said, was the effect on families.
“What do I say to the victims?” he asked.
Newsom has said little else since about the decision he is weighing, and his office did not directly address a question this week about his position on a mass commutation, instead pointing to his larger criticism of the death penalty.
“Governor Newsom has been clear about his position on the death penalty since his first year in office, when he ordered a moratorium on executions,” spokeswoman Diana Crofts-Pelayo said in a statement. “He believes the intentional killing of another person is wrong.”
Many others across California have spoken out about Newsom’s looming decision, including prosecutors, police, faith leaders, prison officials and advocates for social justice. In public letters and private pleas, in newspaper editorials and social media posts, they’ve lobbied the governor over what could be a legacy-defining choice — and a political sticking point.
Among those weighing in are the loved ones of California’s murder victims. For some, commuting the death sentences would put an end to lengthy death penalty appeals that prolong closure and resurface the pain of their worst days.
For others, though, a commutation would feel like stolen justice.
“It’s soul-shattering for a parent,” said Sandy Friend, whose 8-year-old son — Michael “Mikey” Lyons — was kidnapped, sexually abused, tortured and murdered by a stranger who had killed before. Her son was found dead on the banks of the Yuba City river, wearing nothing but his Batman T-shirt.
Robert Boyd Rhoades, whom Friend refers to only as “that monster,” was sentenced to death for the boy’s murder 30 years ago.
“To me, it’s a direct slap in the face to the entire justice system,” Friend said of Newsom’s possible commutations. “I don’t think it’s fair that he won’t stop and take a minute to look at these cases, and if anything, sit down with the family members that are affected. That’s the least he could do before he takes his pen and wipes it away.”
Friend said Rhoades doesn’t deserve the mercy he never extended Mikey, the boy she called her “little helper” who loved fishing and practiced roaring like a lion to “scare the bogeyman away.”
Newsom drew a mixture of public ire and vocal support when he announced his execution moratorium in 2019. Families were not individually notified but found out through the news.
Phyllis Loya was among those who felt hurt by that decision. Her son, 35-year-old Larry Lasater, was a Marine veteran and police officer who was shot and killed in the line of duty by Alexander Hamilton, a suspected supermarket and bank robber in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lasater’s widow gave birth to their son two and a half months later.
Loya, who was a practicing lawyer before her son’s death, said she did not always believe in the death penalty, but her personal experience changed that. She estimates she has spent at least 400 days in court since the trial for the man who shot her son and has suffered four heart attacks.
“To me, the bullets that killed my son injured my heart, and I’ve been paying for it a lot,” said Loya, 78. “The deal is, I have to fight. In fact, I think the rage has probably kept me alive. The need to fight for him has probably kept me alive.”
“Every time we fight stuff like this, it’s re-traumatizing us,” Loya said. “It’s the governor that’s re-traumatizing us now, it’s the legislature.”
California’s broader history with the death penalty is complex.
The California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in 1972, but voters quickly brought it back via a ballot initiative. The state has executed 13 people since. Capital punishment opponents in the state tried to end the death penalty again in 2016, but voters narrowly rejected that bid.
California has not put anyone to death since 2006 amid legal challenges over lethal injection. In 2019, Newsom became the first governor to issue a moratorium blocking executions.
“My ultimate goal is to end the death penalty in California,” he said at the time.
The following year, Newsom signed the Racial Justice Act, a law seeking to lower the legal hurdles for defendants trying to prove that racism had seeped into their court proceedings. If a judge finds a violation of the Racial Justice Act, a case can be revisited — and even take the death penalty off the table.
A novel lawsuit filed this year before the California Supreme Court alleges the death penalty’s racial tilt violates the state constitution, citing 15 empirical studies that show Black and Latino defendants are sentenced to die at a much higher rate than other defendants accused of the same crimes.
The lawsuit has earned firm pushback from a handful of district attorneys in counties where prosecutors continue pursuing death sentences. Many of those same district attorneys — joined by the California Police Chiefs Association and some sheriffs — have written forceful letters to the governor in recent weeks, urging him to consider how a blanket commutation would affect victims’ loved ones.
“The death penalty is not easy to get to in California. It’s reserved for the worst of the worst,” Dan Dow, the district attorney of San Luis Obispo County, said in an interview. “The governor is attempting to usurp the will of the people.”
In his letter to Newsom, Dow cited the stories of the three people killed by two defendants his office put on death row: Rachel Newhouse, Audria Crawford and Kesha Gurke.
Newhouse and Crawford, both college students, were ambushed, beaten, raped and killed in the late 1990s by Rex Allan Krebs, whom Dow called a “career violent felon.” Kesha, a 19-month-old baby, was severely beaten and burned by her mother’s boyfriend, Michael Whisenhunt.
If Newsom does indeed want to clear out California’s death row before leaving office in January, he would need to initiate the process soon.
Under the state constitution, the governor cannot unilaterally commute the sentence of someone with numerous felony cases without the additional sign-off of the California Supreme Court. About 70 percent of those on death row in California have felony convictions outside their capital murder cases.
For those prisoners, Newsom must recommend commutation to the Supreme Court’s seven justices, who would review the individual case file. Before the commutation can take legal effect, at least four of the justices would need to vote in favor of mercy.
It’s not clear how Newsom’s office would pull off the mechanics of such a sweeping move. He could ask the Supreme Court to forgo an individual evaluation of each case, including waiving the standard parole board investigation that explores a prisoner’s court record, criminal history and behavior behind bars.
But that would deviate from the Supreme Court’s past practice, said Anne Maria Schubert, a vocal victim advocate and former Sacramento County District Attorney.
“To disrupt that would be shocking,” said Schubert, who now runs the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a small policy nonprofit in California. “The purpose of commutation is to look at the person to see if they deserve mercy. A blanket commutation is not looking at individuals.”
“If Governor Newsom seeks to do a blanket commutation,” Schubert said, “he can expect a legal challenge to that.”
Governors in other states, including Oregon and Illinois, have commuted their own death rows, but none were nearly as large as California’s.
“It’s a huge thing we’re asking him to do, and everybody understands the pressures of his office and the questions about the future, whatever it holds,” said Mike Farrell, an actor and a lifelong anti-death-penalty advocate. “The weight of it is mind-boggling for me.”
“The horror of this system, the dehumanization that occurs, is beyond anything I can tolerate,” Farrell said. “It’s doing great harm, and that’s something that Governor Newsom understands.”
During Newsom’s conversation with Stevenson, the two discussed Jeff Rosen, the Santa Clara County District Attorney who had to similarly navigate the sensitivities of victims’ families with his own personal opposition to capital punishment.
Rosen spent the majority of his 30-year career as a prosecutor supporting the death penalty before visiting Stevenson’s National Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, and changing his mind.
In 2020, Rosen announced that his office would stop seeking the death penalty and later worked to have the 19 people on death row from his county resentenced, a years-long process that he said involved sit-down meetings with the victims’ loved ones.
He empathized with the question facing Newsom — and the pain his decision might bring the victims’ families.
“I think he’s thinking what the right thing to do is, and what is the best way to implement the right thing,” Rosen said. “You want to get both of those correct … That’s what I would be thinking about.”
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