California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday that he is replacing every one of the state’s 548 death sentences with life without parole, a step that would leave the nation’s largest death row empty. The Death Penalty Information Center says no larger mass clemency has taken place in U.S. history. The people affected make up more than a quarter of everyone sentenced to death in America.
By Saturday, at least a dozen California district attorneys had publicly attacked the decision, and several were signaling a legal challenge.
“State-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values,” Newsom wrote in a letter to residents, saying the practice undermines the legal system. The law itself stays on the books, the clemency announcement notes, and his office says the prisoners will stay behind bars and will not qualify for release.
It is not finished yet
The announcement is not the end of the process. Under the California Constitution, a governor cannot commute the sentence of someone twice convicted of a felony unless the state Supreme Court recommends it, with at least four justices agreeing. Newsom’s office puts that group at 382 cases, or about 70 percent of the total. So for most of the people involved, the decision now rests with the court.
The justices were already examining capital punishment. Earlier this year the court ordered the state Department of Justice to explain why the death penalty should not be declared unconstitutional. No ruling on the commutations has been reported.
What prosecutors are arguing
The objections fall into four groups.
Individual verdicts. Prosecutors say one order wipes out hundreds of separate decisions in which juries weighed evidence and judges and appeals courts reviewed the outcome. Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho said justice requires looking at each case on its own.
Victims’ rights. Critics cite Marsy’s Law, the voter-approved amendment that gives crime victims rights in the state constitution. San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson said he knew of no victims’ families who had been notified, and named survivors connected to the Kevin Cooper murder case who he said were not contacted. Newsom’s office says it is working with state agencies to notify victims, survivors and next of kin.
Voters. Californians turned down ballot measures to end the death penalty in 2012 and 2016, and in 2016 approved Proposition 66, which was meant to speed up appeals.
Parole. Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer called the move “mercy for the wolves.” He contends that parole board rules that took effect October 1 could open a route to parole for thousands of people serving life without parole, and that the commutations could bring these prisoners a step closer to release. That claim runs directly against the governor’s assurance that none of them can be released.
Not every prosecutor disputes the power itself. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman accepted that a governor may commute sentences already handed down, while arguing that ending capital punishment is a job for lawmakers or voters.
San Diego County’s Summer Stephan said her office is researching lawful remedies, and Kern County’s Cynthia Zimmer said the action “will be challenged.” Former Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert told The New York Times she plans to sue. As of Saturday, no lawsuit had been reported as filed.
How California got here
Newsom’s position is not new. In 2019, shortly after taking office, he imposed a moratorium on executions and had the execution chamber at San Quentin dismantled. California had already gone more than a decade without carrying out a death sentence. Since 2024, condemned men have been spread among other prisons, and condemned women moved into the general population of a women’s facility, so “death row” has become more of a legal category than a place.
The incoming governor, Xavier Becerra, has said he will keep the moratorium.
The politics are harder to separate. Newsom is weighing a presidential run after his term ends, and his decision came two days after the general election, a timing that critics have seized on. Anderson accused him of acting out of political ambition. Dan Newman, a strategist who advises Newsom and also works with anti-death-penalty groups, said the governor kept his political team out of the decision.
Outgoing executives have done this before. President Joe Biden commuted 37 of the 40 federal death sentences in December 2024, and Illinois Gov. George Ryan emptied that state’s death row in 2003. Neither involved anything close to this number of people.
