Newsom seeks to replace every California death sentence—but most need court action

Gov. Gavin Newsom now wants to replace all 548 current death sentences with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. His November 5, 2026, announcement goes beyond the execution moratorium he imposed in 2019: instead of leaving death judgments suspended, effective commutations would replace the punishment itself. But for roughly seven in ten proposed recipients, he cannot act alone.⁠9⁠3⁠8

The distinction matters because the first accounts did not agree on what had happened. BBC News and NBC News reported on November 5 that the commutations were completed. CBS News and the Los Angeles Times, reporting the same day, described an intended action with court review still required. The governor’s own documents describe a plan and a proposed clemency action—not proof that every sentence has already changed. There is no established count of legally effective individual grants.⁠1⁠6⁠3⁠7⁠8⁠9

The central document is titled “Explanatory Statement – Proposed Death Penalty Clemency Action.” It requests California Supreme Court recommendations for 382 condemned people convicted of more than one felony. Against the announced population of 548, that is approximately 69.7%. The remaining 166 make up about 30.3%; their exclusion from that identified court-review group does not establish that their commutations have been signed.⁠8⁠3

Those numbers supersede the Los Angeles Times’ initial description of a roughly 60–40 split between cases requiring court action and those Newsom could handle directly. The statement’s count produces something closer to 70–30. This is arithmetic from the document and announced total, not a competing estimate from another outlet.⁠7⁠8

Article V, section 8(a), of California’s Constitution restricts a governor’s clemency power for a person twice convicted of a felony. A pardon or commutation requires a recommendation supported by a majority of the state Supreme Court’s justices—four of the seven. The court does not itself commute the sentence; its recommendation permits the governor to do so.⁠67⁠8

The additional convictions can predate a death sentence or arise from crimes committed while awaiting execution. And a favorable recommendation is not automatic: the court rejected ten clemency cases submitted by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018, near the end of his term. That history does not predict the outcome here, but it rules out treating court review as paperwork.⁠7

The November 5 public announcement is established. An independently confirmed filing or receipt date, resulting court recommendations and completion of all necessary commutation instruments are not. Newsom has made a consequential decision; its implementation remains unfinished.⁠8⁠9

For anyone whose commutation becomes effective, the punishment would be life without parole. This is neither a pardon nor a finding of innocence. Convictions would remain intact, prisoners would remain imprisoned, and this action would give them no opportunity for parole. Newsom calls it the most severe punishment he can impose through clemency.⁠3

That makes the proposal more than another pause. On March 13, 2019, Newsom halted executions, withdrew the lethal-injection protocol and ordered San Quentin’s execution chamber closed. The moratorium did not replace death sentences or release prisoners. A commutation would change the judgment under which a person remains confined, even while no execution is imminent under the existing halt.⁠69⁠8

California’s last execution was Clarence Ray Allen’s lethal injection on January 17, 2006. The state has carried out 13 executions since 1978. Allen was 76 and had spent 23 years on death row; some current condemned prisoners are in their 80s and 90s. The proposal reaches people who have lived under death judgments for decades.⁠6⁠7

It would not abolish capital punishment. Prosecutors could still seek new death sentences, with juries and courts retaining their roles. Voters rejected repeal in 2012 and again in 2016, when they also narrowly approved a measure intended to speed death-penalty proceedings. Newsom is using clemency to change existing sentences, not changing the law governing future cases.⁠3

His argument is categorical, not a claim that every recipient was wrongfully convicted or deserves special leniency. He says state-sanctioned killing conflicts with California’s values and that the system cannot be administered fairly. He acknowledges voters’ decisions to retain the penalty while arguing that the same Constitution also gives governors clemency authority.⁠46⁠7

The system continues to consume public resources even without executions. A 2025 Habeas Corpus Resource Center estimate put annual spending on automatic capital appeals and habeas corpus petitions at more than $200 million. Death-penalty appeals are estimated to account for about a quarter of the state Supreme Court’s work. Commutations could reduce capital-litigation costs, but those figures are not a savings forecast: imprisonment would continue, and pending proceedings would not all automatically disappear.⁠7

A universal decision necessarily includes cases whose brutality remains central to families’ objections. Potential recipients include Charles Ng, convicted of killing six men, three women and two infant boys in Northern California in 1984 and 1985; Richard Allen Davis, who abducted and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993; and Christopher Cheary, convicted of murdering, raping and torturing his girlfriend’s three-year-old daughter, Sophia Acosta. Their inclusion follows from the proposal’s scope, not an announced reassessment of those crimes.⁠7

Bethany Webb sees the prolonged capital process itself as a source of harm. Her sister Laura was among eight people killed in the 2011 Seal Beach mass shooting; their mother was shot and badly injured. Webb rejects the promise that executing an offender will repair a family’s loss. “It is brutalizing to family members, the whole system,” she told the Los Angeles Times.⁠7

Sandy Friend reaches the opposite conclusion. Her eight-year-old son, Michael Lyons, was abducted and murdered in 1996. “It’s total disrespect for the victims. It’s a slap in the face,” she said of removing death sentences. Neither woman speaks for every bereaved family. The same decision can relieve one family of further capital proceedings while taking from another the punishment it believed justice required.⁠7

Newsom acknowledges that his decision will revive painful memories and anger and hurt some Californians. He describes it as among the hardest decisions of his governorship and accepts responsibility for its impact. His intended endpoint is imprisonment for life, with attention directed toward remembering victims rather than executing offenders.⁠5⁠46

A separate lawsuit could reach further than clemency. The state public defender challenged California’s death-penalty system in 2024, alleging persistent racial disparities. This spring, the Supreme Court ordered the attorney general to explain why the penalty should not be declared unconstitutional. Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote in August that evidence of pervasive disparities could show a constitutionally intolerable risk of arbitrary punishment. That case concerns the law itself; it is not a ruling on Newsom’s clemency requests.⁠7

For this proposal, the immediate test is narrower and time-limited. Newsom’s term ends in January 2027. To complete the 382 court-dependent commutations himself, he needs the necessary recommendations and must then issue the grants while still governor. No court decision date is established. The next consequential development is not another declaration against executions, but the legal action that would make his decision effective.⁠7⁠8