SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that he will commute every death sentence in California, converting the sentences of all 548 people on the nation’s largest death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole in what death penalty researchers are calling the largest mass clemency in American history.

Newsom made the announcement in a letter, arguing that capital punishment has no place in the state. “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,” he wrote, according to reporting by The Associated Press and Al Jazeera.

548 Sentences Erased With One Letter

The decision empties a death row that has not carried out an execution in about 20 years. California has put 13 people to death since 1978, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, while spending roughly $6 billion on the machinery of capital punishment over that period. Newsom himself imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019, but hundreds of people remained under sentence of death until now.

Al Jazeera reported that the move will cut the national death row population by nearly 30 percent. Those affected will instead serve life sentences with no chance of parole.

“As Governor, I alone bear responsibility for this decision and its impact, just as I alone would bear responsibility for each execution,” Newsom wrote. The AP reported that he acknowledged the choice was among the hardest of his career because it will reopen painful memories for the families of crime victims.

Advocates Cheer, a Legal Review Looms

Criminal justice reform groups praised the announcement immediately. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said the commutations “reflect what justice demands: an end to a racist, error-prone, and inhumane punishment.” The ACLU is already pursuing a separate legal challenge arguing that California’s death penalty statute is racially discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called the announcement “a decisive moment in the history of the death penalty in the United States.” Other governors have granted blanket clemency before, Maher noted, but “none have been at this scale.”

The commutations are not entirely self-executing. Under the California Constitution, the state Supreme Court must approve clemency for anyone who has been convicted of a felony more than once. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, roughly two-thirds of the commutations will need that review before they become final. That process could stretch on and gives opponents a venue to press their objections.

Coverage reviewed by USA Herald did not include reaction from prosecutors’ associations, victims’ families or Republican officials. Those voices are expected to be central to the debate in the days ahead, and this story will be updated as they respond.

Voters Spoke in 2016, and Newsom Is Acting Anyway

The politics are volatile. California voters rejected a 2016 ballot measure that would have repealed the death penalty, and the same year narrowly approved a separate measure to speed up appeals in capital cases. Critics are likely to argue that a governor on his way out the door is overriding the public’s stated will. Newsom’s second and final term ends in January, and Al Jazeera reports that former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is set to take over as governor on January 4.

Supporters counter that the system has been frozen for two decades and that the cost of maintaining it, including housing and legal defense for hundreds of condemned prisoners, has delivered no executions. They also point to the national record of wrongful convictions: since 1973, at least 203 people sentenced to death have later been exonerated, per the Death Penalty Information Center.

What It Means for the 2028 Race

Newsom has long been viewed as a likely presidential contender, and the timing, days after Democrats’ strong midterm results set off early speculation about 2028, will not be lost on political observers. His record on criminal justice has been mixed: he vetoed limits on solitary confinement in 2022 and limits on prison cooperation with immigration authorities in 2019, positions that put him at odds with some advocates and legislators. The mass commutation gives him a signature progressive achievement but also hands Republicans a ready-made line of attack in a general election.

The decision lands as public opinion on capital punishment remains split in complicated ways. A Pew Research Center poll released in August found 66 percent of Americans support the death penalty for murder, yet about 73 percent acknowledge a risk that an innocent person could be executed. Meanwhile, the Trump administration pledged in April to expand federal executions, including the use of firing squads, setting up a sharp contrast between Washington and Sacramento.

What Happens Next

Several questions remain unanswered in the initial reporting: how quickly the roughly 548 inmates will be reclassified, whether they will be moved out of the special housing that death row inmates have occupied, and how the state Supreme Court will handle the volume of clemency reviews. Twenty-three states have formally abolished the death penalty, and others have effectively stopped using it while keeping it on the books.

For families of victims, the announcement is likely to be deeply divisive. Some will see certainty in a life sentence with no possibility of release; others will feel that a punishment imposed by a jury has been undone by one man’s signature. For the 548 people affected, and for the legal system that sentenced them, the decision marks the end of an era in the nation’s most populous state.

Reporting based on accounts from The Associated Press (via PBS NewsHour), Al Jazeera and the Death Penalty Information Center.