California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday, November 5, 2026, that he will commute the death sentences of all 548 people on the state’s death row, converting each sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The decision, announced in a three-page open letter addressed to all Californians, effectively empties the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere, a population that has not seen an execution in two decades. The Death Penalty Information Center described the move as the largest mass commutation in American history, a scale no governor has reached before.
The announcement arrives in the final months of Newsom’s second and final term as governor, and it lands as one of the most consequential criminal justice decisions of his eight years in office. Newsom, a Democrat who is widely expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination in 2028, framed the decision as a matter of values and of the limits of government. In his letter, he wrote that he firmly believes state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, that it undermines the foundations of the legal system, and that it diminishes all of us. The words were direct, and they left little room for doubt about where he stands.
What Newsom Announced
In his open letter, Newsom said he will commute every death sentence currently in force in California to life imprisonment without parole. The number is 548, according to the governor’s office, and it covers every person under a sentence of death in the state. Once the commutations are complete, no one in California will be under a sentence of death, and no future governor will be able to carry out an execution under any of those sentences. The people affected will instead spend the rest of their lives in prison, with no possibility of parole.
Newsom explained his reasoning in moral and practical terms. He said he had come to understand the limits of what government can justly accomplish, and he pointed to the flaws that have long shadowed capital punishment in California: the risk of error, the uneven way the penalty has been applied, the years and decades that cases spend moving through the courts, and the enormous cost of a system that has produced very few executions. Supporters of the decision say those arguments have been building for years, and that the governor’s move finally matches the reality of a system that had already stopped carrying out executions.
The Numbers Behind the Decision
The headline figure is 548, but the details behind it help explain why this decision matters so much, both in California and across the country. Of the 548 people affected, 529 are men and 19 are women, according to the governor’s office. Together they made up the largest death row population in the Western Hemisphere, and they represented more than a quarter of all the people under sentence of death in the United States. The Death Penalty Information Center said that if every commutation is approved, the national death row population would fall by nearly 30 percent, leaving about 1,388 people under sentence of death across the country, the lowest number since 1984.
The scale becomes clearer when it is set against California’s own history with the death penalty. The state has executed only 13 people since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and its last execution was in 2006, when Clarence Ray Allen was put to death. That means California has gone twenty years without an execution while maintaining the country’s largest death row, a combination that critics of the system have long described as a punishment in name only, and that supporters of the system have described as a failure of the courts and the state to carry out the law.
The cost of that long standstill has also been part of the debate. The Death Penalty Information Center has reported that California has spent around six billion dollars on death penalty cases since 1978, while carrying out just thirteen executions in that time. Supporters of abolition point to that figure as evidence that the system is wasteful as well as unreliable. Supporters of the death penalty respond that the cost is driven by the appeals process itself, and that the answer is to make the process work faster, not to abandon the punishment. Either way, the numbers show a system that has been expensive, slow, and, for two decades, inactive.
Why 382 Cases Still Need Court Approval
Not every commutation will take effect immediately. Under the California Constitution, the governor cannot grant clemency to a person who has been convicted of more than one felony without a recommendation from the California Supreme Court. That rule applies to 382 of the 548 cases, according to the governor’s office, which is roughly two-thirds of the total. The remaining cases, about one-third, can take effect right away. For the rest, the commutations will not become final until the court has reviewed them and given its approval.
The court’s role is not a formality. Reports on the announcement said that four of the court’s seven justices must sign off in the cases that require review, and the Death Penalty Information Center noted that the grants apply immediately to about one-third of the people on death row, while the other two-thirds await court review before the commutations are final. Newsom has asked the court to return its recommendations by the end of 2026, so that he can issue the commutation certificates before his term ends in January 2027.
What Does Not Change
It is important to be clear about what this decision does and does not do. The commutations do not abolish the death penalty in California, and they do not repeal the law that allows it. The death penalty stays on the books, and prosecutors can still seek it in new cases. Newsom does not have the authority to repeal capital punishment on his own, and the commutations apply only to the sentences that are already in force. Anyone convicted of a capital crime in the future could still be sentenced to death under California law.
California voters have also had their say on this question, and they have twice chosen to keep the death penalty. In 2012 and again in 2016, voters rejected measures that would have abolished capital punishment in the state. That history is central to the criticism of Newsom’s decision, and it is also central to understanding why the governor chose clemency rather than trying to change the law itself. Clemency is a power the governor holds directly, while repeal would require either the legislature or the voters to act.
A Death Row That Had Already Stopped Executing
To understand why Newsom acted now, it helps to look back at how California reached this point. The state’s modern death penalty era began after the United States Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, but California’s system quickly became known for its delays. Cases took decades to move through the courts, and executions were rare even when the law allowed them. By the time Newsom took office in 2019, the system had effectively ground to a halt, with hundreds of people on death row and no executions on the horizon.
Newsom’s first major step came in March 2019, only two months into his first term, when he announced a moratorium on executions and called the death penalty a failure. He cited serious concerns about persistent racial discrimination, high costs, and the risk of human error, themes that the Death Penalty Information Center returned to in its account of this week’s decision. The moratorium did not change anyone’s sentence, but it meant that no execution would take place while he was governor, and it set the stage for the broader action he has now taken.
How Supporters and Critics Are Responding
Supporters of the commutations, including civil rights groups, criminal justice reform advocates, and many defense lawyers, have welcomed the decision as historic and long overdue. Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, praised the move, and the Catholic Mobilizing Network described it as the largest commutation in history and a witness for life rooted in mercy rather than retribution. The Death Penalty Information Center’s executive director, Robin Maher, said the announcement marks a decisive moment in the history of the death penalty in the United States, and noted that while other governors have granted universal clemencies, none have done so at this scale.
The supporters’ argument rests on several claims that have been made for years about the death penalty in America. One is the risk of executing an innocent person. The Death Penalty Information Center says that since 1973, at least 203 people wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the United States have later been exonerated, a figure that supporters say proves the system cannot be trusted with a punishment that cannot be undone. Another is the argument about fairness: that who receives a death sentence depends too much on where the crime happened, on the quality of the defense, and on race, rather than on the crime alone.
Critics of the decision have been just as forceful, and their objections come from prosecutors, law enforcement leaders, and victims’ families who say the governor has overruled the courts, the juries, and the voters. Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said Newsom did not notify the state’s district attorneys that he was going to commute the sentences, and did not seek individual input from victims’ families. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who ended his own campaign for governor after not advancing in the June 2026 primary, blamed politics for the governor’s actions and said the decision was driven by ambition rather than justice.
The criticism is sharpest in the counties that prosecuted the largest numbers of death row cases. Riverside County alone accounts for eighty-seven of the 548 people on death row, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and its leaders have said the commutations disregard the work of the prosecutors and juries who secured those sentences. For them, the death penalty is not an abstract question of policy but a judgment made case by case, after trials in which the facts were heard and the sentence was imposed by a jury. A blanket commutation, they argue, treats very different cases as if they were the same.
Critics also raise the question of democratic legitimacy. California voters kept the death penalty in 2012 and again in 2016, and critics say a governor should not use clemency to override the expressed will of the voters on such a scale. They argue that if the death penalty is to end in California, it should end through the legislature or through a vote of the people, not through a single executive action in the final weeks of a governor’s term. Supporters answer that clemency is a power the constitution gives the governor precisely for moments like this, and that Newsom is using it openly and within the law. That disagreement is unlikely to be settled soon, and it will shape the political debate around the decision for months to come.
What Happens Next
The immediate next step belongs to the California Supreme Court. The court must review the 382 cases that require its recommendation, and Newsom has asked for those recommendations by the end of 2026. If the court acts on that timetable, the governor will be able to issue commutation certificates for all 548 cases before he leaves office in January 2027. If the court moves more slowly, some cases could still be pending when the new governor takes office, and the question of whether to complete them would fall to his successor.
For the people on death row and their families, and for the families of their victims, the next weeks will bring something more personal than politics: the formal process of commutation, case by case, with the court’s review and the governor’s certificates. Whatever the political debate, the practical effect is clear. California’s death row, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, is being emptied, and the state that has not carried out an execution in twenty years is now taking the formal step of saying it will not carry one out under any of the sentences now in force. That is why this decision is being described, by supporters and by neutral observers alike, as historic, and why its effects will be felt long after the announcements and the arguments have passed.
Readers who want to follow the story as it develops should watch for the California Supreme Court’s recommendations, for any response from the incoming governor, and for the formal commutation certificates themselves. The Reuters report on the commutations sets out the announcement in full, the CNN report covers the court review process and the cases affected, and the Death Penalty Information Center’s account provides the national context, including the fall in the United States death row population and the history of mass clemency by other governors.
FAQ
How many death sentences did Newsom commute?
Newsom announced that he will commute all 548 death sentences in California to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Of those, 529 are men and 19 are women, according to the governor’s office.
Do all 548 commutations take effect immediately?
No. About one-third take effect right away, but 382 cases need a recommendation from the California Supreme Court, because the state constitution requires court review for clemency when the person has more than one felony conviction.
Does this abolish the death penalty in California?
No. The death penalty stays on the books, and prosecutors can still seek it in new cases. Voters chose to keep it in 2012 and 2016, and only the legislature or the voters can repeal it.
When was California’s last execution?
California’s last execution was in 2006, when Clarence Ray Allen was put to death. The state has executed only 13 people since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Why did Newsom say he took this action?
In his open letter, Newsom said state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of the legal system, and diminishes all of us. He also pointed to the risk of error, unequal application, high costs, and long delays.