In his final weeks as governor, Gavin Newsom has made a major change to California’s correctional system — one that will be felt deeply by families of victims across the state.
Newsom dropped news on Thursday that he will be commuting the death sentences of all 548 people on death row across the state. These inmates will now face life in prison.
“I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us,” Newsom wrote in a letter to Californians.
Calling the decision one of the “most difficult” of his career, Newsom acknowledged victim families while reinforcing his belief that this is a “righteous action.”
But furious advocates for victims blasted the decision and told The California Post they will challenge it in court.
“He talks about the importance of California values. Where do those California values come into play when we’re talking about the mothers of murdered children, murdered police officers, victims that are school shootings?” said Anne Marie Schubert, a former district attorney who now leads the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.
With California’s death row housing over a quarter of the nation’s condemned inmates, some of the “worst of the worst” in the United States will no longer face the death penalty.
Some of these heinous killers include Richard Allen Davis — who kidnapped, raped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993 and is now housed at Avenal State Prison.
Lonnie Franklin, nicknamed the “Grim Sleeper,” killed nine women and one teenage girl in Los Angeles, yet is now believed to have as many as 25 victims. He will now avoid death.
Among these malicious murderers is also Cary Stayner, the former Yosemite motel handyman who murdered four women near the national park in 1999.
Also from the northern half of the state is Joseph Naso, infamously known as the “Alphabet Killer,” who was sentenced to death in 2013 after killing four women with matching initials between 1977 and 1994.
With victims all across California is Wayne Adam Ford, the truck driver sentenced to death in 2006 after killing four women; known for cutting up his victims’ bodies, Ford surrendered to authorities in 1998 with a severed breast in his jacket pocket, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The governor said he believes the state “cannot morally kill” these inmates for their horrendous crimes.
“We can now let these offenders die in obscurity while we forever remember and honor the victims,” Newsom wrote.
But advocates said that victims they’ve talked to feel that their blood is boiling.
“This is one man espousing his religious beliefs over the sentence of a jury and a judge, and the will of the voters, as the voters in 2012 and in 2016 voted to keep the death penalty,” said Topo Padilla, president of Crime Victims United.
Padilla said he felt especially upset over the timing of the announcement — right after the midterm elections ended — which made him feel Newsom mass commuted for political reasons.
“What does he politically think this is going to do for him on the national landscape outside of New York and California? I promise you, the balance of this country supports the death penalty as voters,” he said.
