Newsom moves to commute all 548 California death sentences, overriding voters who twice kept the death penalty

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday he intends to commute all 548 death sentences in the state to life in prison without the possibility of parole, calling state-sanctioned killing "incompatible with California's values," NBC News reported.

In an open letter, Newsom called the move "among the most difficult of my career." He wrote that victims' families have every right to be angry, but "as Governor, I have concluded the state cannot morally kill them," and that the condemned should "die in obscurity while we forever remember and honor their victims."

The commutations are not automatic for everyone. Under the California Constitution, the state Supreme Court must sign off before the governor can grant clemency to anyone with more than one felony conviction — 382 of the 548, Newsom said. "I respectfully request that the Court issue its recommendation by the end of this year so that I may act before the end of my term," he wrote to the justices. Newsom is term-limited and leaves office in January. No one is freed: the replacement sentence is life without parole.

Among those on California's death row is Richard Allen Davis, convicted of kidnapping and murdering 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993. Her father, Marc Klaas, called the decision a "knife in the back" to victims' families. "Why, two days after the midterms, does Gavin Newsom feel the need to commute these sentences? Who benefits from this?" he told NBC News. The California District Attorneys Association condemned the move, saying it replaced case-by-case decisions by "hundreds of jurors and judges" with "a single executive decision."

Voters have already weighed in. Californians rejected abolishing the death penalty in 2012 (Proposition 34) and again in 2016 (Proposition 62). California has not executed anyone since Jan. 17, 2006, and Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019.