Newsom’s death sentence commutation impacts 7 people charged in Shasta County

Gov. Gavin Newsom has commuted all current death sentences in California to life without parole, he announced in a letter addressed to Californians today. The order will impact all 548 people who are currently on the state’s death row list, including seven that were charged in Shasta County. 

Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett responded quickly to the news, calling the decision a political agenda. 

“Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision is completely irresponsible and fails to take into consideration the victims, the voters, or the interests of justice,” Bridgett said in a press release today. “He has placed his own political agenda and personal preferences ahead of the rights of victims and their families.”

Her statement mirrors strong support for the death penalty in Shasta, as evidenced by 72.2% voter opposition to Proposition 62, a 2016 ballot measure that would have repealed the death penalty.

California has not executed a prisoner since 2006, when a federal judge ruled that the state’s three-drug lethal injection protocol violated the Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

There are no Californians currently living on death row, because California doesn’t have one. In 2019, Newsom implemented a moratorium, or pause, on executions and closed the execution chamber at San Quentin Prison, moving prisoners into housing units in other state facilities.

The executive order announced today does not end California’s right to sentence people to death. Instead it commutes, or replaces, those already sentenced to death with a lesser penalty: life without parole.

However, there are exceptions, explained Elisabeth Semel, law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-director of the Death Penalty Clinic, a legal clinic at the university that trains students and represents those facing the death penalty.

The state Constitution requires the California Supreme Court’s approval before the governor can grant clemency to anyone with more than one felony conviction, meaning that for some under a death sentence in California — around 60%, Semel said — the courts will decide if the order is a misuse of the governor’s constitutional powers using a simple metric.

“[The court] does not look at any case individually,” Semel explained. “It does not examine the merits of the case. It asks one question and only one question, and that is whether the act in this case, the recommendation of clemency for a group of individuals, is an abuse of the governor’s constitutional authority.”

She said Californians should consider the financial benefits that could come from the order, in part based on the years it can take for those under a death sentence to wait for representation in court. 

“We have 548 people on California’s death row,” she said. “Of that number, about 370 of them do not have counsel to represent them in post-conviction proceedings where they’re entitled to a lawyer. It’s because we have neither the funds nor the number of qualified lawyers. So we have men and women waiting literally decades for representation.”

Xavier Becerra won California’s gubernatorial election on Tuesday. On the campaign trail, he spoke in unison with Newsom’s concerns about wrongful convictions, promising to extend the pause on carrying out the death sentence. 

“As Governor, I will extend California’s moratorium on executions and continue moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong,” Becerra said in a social media post. 

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