Gavin Newsom can commute all California death sentences and still become president
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.
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