Gavin Newsom has found one more way to put the people who commit California’s worst crimes ahead of the people who suffer them. The outgoing governor announced Thursday that he is commuting the sentence of every single inmate on the state’s death row, all 548 of them, Fox News reports.
Under the executive action, every death sentence becomes life in prison without the possibility of parole. In a letter to constituents, Newsom called the system flawed, error-prone and morally out of step with the state. “After nearly 30 years in public office, I have come to understand the limits of what government can justly accomplish,” Newsom wrote. “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.”
California’s values. Notice whose values got left out. California voters have been asked twice to abolish the death penalty, and twice they said no. In 2016 they rejected Proposition 62, which would have repealed it, and approved Proposition 66 to speed up the appeals process. Newsom answered those votes in 2019 with a moratorium on executions and an order to dismantle the execution chamber at San Quentin. The state has not carried out an execution since 2006. Now he has finished the job with a pen.
Marc Klaas knows exactly what that means. His 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was kidnapped and murdered in 1993, and her killer, Richard Allen Davis, sat on death row until Thursday. “He just gave the gift of life to [hundreds of] people who took the gift of life from their victims,” Klaas told Fox News Digital. “He has definitely secured the serial killer vote now.”
San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow was just as blunt. “Governor Newsom just told the families of Rachel Newhouse, Aundria Crawford, Kesha Gurke and every other innocent victim of California’s 548 condemned killers that the killers’ lives matter more,” he said. “Juries chose justice case by case, voters chose it five times, and one outgoing governor tried to erase it all with a pen.”
Even Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman pointed out that the governor does not get the final word on the law itself. “Only the Legislature or the voters can do that,” Hochman said. “Californians have been asked on two separate ballot initiatives to abolish the death penalty and both times they have chosen to keep it for the most serious crimes.” He said his office will keep evaluating every death-penalty-eligible case until the law changes.
The applause came from the expected corner. Rev. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser to death row inmates, called the commutations “the height of moral leadership” and prayed that governors in other states would “follow Newsom’s lead,” according to the Sacramento Bee.
This is a window into how Newsom governs. Jurors weighed the evidence one case at a time. Voters went to the polls and said keep it. Families waited decades for the sentence a court handed down. One man on his way out the door decided all of that counted for less than his own conscience. Let that sink in the next time he asks voters anywhere for their trust.
Source: foxnews.com