Gavin Newsom’s Big Move on the Death Penalty
The Atlantic · Elizabeth Bruenig ·
Gavin Newsom’s mass commutation of death-row prisoners reveals a growing split in the country over capital punishment.
The Execution Divide
Gavin Newsom’s mass commutation of death-row prisoners reveals a growing split in the country over capital punishment.
Today, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he will commute the sentences of every prisoner on the state’s death row—548 people in all. With this action, Newsom could effect the largest-ever reduction of America’s death-row population, dropping the national total by about 27 percent. (California’s supreme court must approve some of the clemency requests.) California last executed a prisoner in 2006, and in 2019 Newsom instituted a moratorium against the death penalty via executive order. But in both 2012 and 2016, Californians narrowly voted against ballot measures that would have repealed the state’s death penalty, meaning many in the state would still prefer to see it in use. Newsom’s commutation order could foreclose that possibility in at least the near future.
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