California Governor Gavin Newsom has commuted the death sentences of all 548 people on the state’s death row, converting each one to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Newsom announced the move on Thursday in an open letter to Californians, calling state-sanctioned execution incompatible with the state’s values. The decision, described by the Death Penalty Information Center as the largest mass commutation in American history, empties the biggest death row in the United States — more than a quarter of all condemned prisoners in the country.
The commutations do not take effect for everyone at once. Under California’s constitution, 382 cases must be reviewed and approved by the state Supreme Court, because those prisoners have more than one felony conviction. The remaining cases take effect immediately.
California has not carried out an execution in two decades. Newsom imposed a moratorium shortly after taking office in 2019, and the state’s last execution was in 2006. Only 13 people have been executed in California since 1976, and just five death sentences were handed down in 2025, down from 42 in 1999.
The decision does not abolish the death penalty. Voters chose to keep it in ballot measures in 2012 and 2016, and prosecutors can still seek death sentences in new cases. A future governor could also resume executions.
Among those whose sentences were commuted are some of California’s most notorious killers, including Randy Kraft, Charles Ng and Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993. Davis’s victim’s sister, Jess Nichol, said she supported the decision, saying whether he was executed had “absolutely nothing to do with my recovery or with real public safety”.
Reaction split sharply along familiar lines. The American Civil Liberties Union called the move “a historic step towards ending the death penalty in California and across the country”, while the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, Crime Survivors and the California District Attorneys Association said it would harm victims’ families and override the will of voters. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman noted that Californians had twice voted to keep the death penalty and said his office would continue to evaluate death-eligible cases.
Newsom, who is nearing the end of his second and final term as governor and is widely seen as weighing a 2028 presidential bid, said the decision followed nearly three decades of opposing executions as an elected official. He described it as one of the most difficult of his career, while calling the commutations a righteous action.
The announcement comes as the death penalty faces renewed scrutiny in the United States after Tennessee’s failed execution of Christa Pike in late September, when she survived two doses of pentobarbital. Tennessee has since paused its remaining executions.
Sources: CNN (https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/05/us/california-death-row-commutation) and Reuters via BusinessWorld (https://bworldonline.com/world/2026/11/06/792030/california-governor-to-grant-clemency-to-all-548-death-row-inmates-in-state/).
