Outgoing California Governor Gavin Newsom has commuted the sentence of all prisoners on death row.

 

California Governor Gavin Newsom. Fox News/Reuters. 

Outgoing California Governor Gavin Newsom has commuted the sentence of all 548 prisoners on death row. Fox News. The commutation will spare the lives of every prisoner on death row but will not remove the death penalty from the state. Newsom had put a moratorium on executions since taking office in 2019 and the state has not executed anyone since 2006. Newsom said that the death penalty was fundamentally flawed and did not align with the values of his state. However, families of the victims of the prisoners on death row condemned the move. California voters have supported the death penalty, voting down proposition 62 which would have ended it in 2016 and in the same year supporting proposition 66, which narrows the appeals process. 

My Comment:

This is mostly meaningless in actual results. California wasn't going to execute anyone any time soon. California's governor elect, Xavier Becerra, said he was going to extend the moratorium once he got into office next year and that means nothing would change until 2030 at the earliest. And because California is basically a one-party state, it would be unlikely that he or the Democrats would lose power. I guess there is a chance that a pro-death penalty Democrat could be elected someday, or the GOP could win the office (after what we saw with Texas, it's possible), but it's unlikely. 

Still, I do feel it's a slap in the face for anyone that was a victim of these killers and their families. Refusing to enforce the law because you disagree with it is one thing. Ending the death penalty is a thing to. But commuting the sentence though? I find it disgusting. 

All of these people on death row are convicted of murdering someone. All of them were sentenced to death. And all of their victims will now be denied the punishment the killers earned. 

Do I think there are problems with the death penalty? Sure. It's not acceptable to execute someone where there is doubt. And our current execution methods are pretty messed up (I'm not a fan of lethal injection, we should use hanging or firing squads). But I find most of the objections to it to be nonsense, most notably the idea that it's racist somehow. 

As for Newsom, I do think he is genuinely opposed to the death penalty. I don't think this is some kind of cynical attempt to shore up a his Presidential ambitions. Indeed, that would be a dumb idea, as the death penalty is still fairly popular. It's not a 80-20 issue, but it is a 60-40 one, and drawing attention to this might lose Newsom a few votes.