Newsom Clears California’s Death Row

California Governor Gavin Newsom has commuted every death sentence in the state, converting 548 cases to life without the possibility of parole in what The Guardian described as the largest clearing of a U.S. death row in modern history.

The practical effect is unusually stark. California has not carried out an execution since 2006, and Newsom imposed a moratorium in 2019, but a moratorium can be lifted by another governor. Commutation reaches further. For the 529 men and 19 women covered by the order, the state can no longer execute them under a future administration.

Newsom framed the decision as moral and institutional at once, arguing that “state-sanctioned killing” is incompatible with California’s values and with a legal system he called imperfect. His office also pointed to the condition of that system: according to The Guardian, 220 people on California’s death row have waited 15 years or more to be appointed habeas counsel, and 139 have waited 20 years or more. If the moratorium alone were removed, 45 people were considered to have exhausted their appeals and could have faced execution.

That is part of why this is not only a symbolic anti-death-penalty gesture. It changes the legal exposure of hundreds of prisoners who had continued living under capital sentences long after executions in the state stopped.

The move follows renewed attention to capital punishment in the United States after the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee, which drew international condemnation. But Newsom’s order is rooted in California’s own long contradiction: a state that kept imposing death sentences while rarely, and then no longer, carrying them out.

There is still one procedural limit. Newsom said the California supreme court must review and approve clemency grants in cases involving multiple felony convictions.

The decision is likely to sharpen a familiar conflict rather than settle it. Death-penalty opponents praised the move, including former California prisons director Jeanne Woodford, who said she remained haunted by the possibility of executing an innocent person. Newsom also acknowledged what commutations can reopen for victims’ families, calling that pain real even as he argued the state should not kill in their name.

California remains one of 27 U.S. states with the death penalty still on the books. After this order, it no longer has anyone left to execute under it.