On Thursday, Nov. 5, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he is commuting every death sentence in the state to life in prison without parole, nearly eight years after declaring a moratorium on executions.
It is the largest mass commutation in modern U.S. history, and it landed like a shockwave because of its scale, its timing, and who it affects most directly: the families who sat through trials, waited through decades of appeals, and built their understanding of justice around a jury's decision to impose death.
This is not a story about 548 strangers. It is a story about 548 cases, each with victims, each with a family that is now being told the punishment has changed, even though the crime has not.
What actually happened
Gavin Newsom said the move will impact 548 people, in the state with the largest number of people under a death sentence in the United States. California's last execution took place about 20 years ago. His office broke that number down as 529 men and 19 women.
In an open letter to Californians, Gavin Newsom framed it as the culmination of a position he has held for decades. "My decision today comes after nearly three decades of openly opposing state-sanctioned executions as an elected official," he wrote.
He also wrote that he firmly believes state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values, undermines the foundations of the legal system, and diminishes each of us, and that "we cannot execute people in our imperfect legal system and remain true to our core values, first among them justice and human decency."
The commutation will not be automatic for everyone. There are 382 cases the California Supreme Court will need to review and approve, according to the governor's office. Those cases involve prisoners with more than one felony conviction.
Under the process described after the announcement, the governor provided official notice to victims' family members and district attorneys. After 10 days, he will commute about one-third of death sentences on his own. The other two-thirds require concurrence from the California Supreme Court.
Among the people affected are some of California's most notorious cases, including serial killer Randy Kraft, Charles Ng, who was convicted of killing 11 people in California in the 1980s, and Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and killed 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993.
What a commutation is, and what it is not
A commutation does not overturn a conviction. It does not declare someone innocent. It does not release anyone.
What it does is change the sentence. Instead of death, the sentence becomes life in prison without the possibility of parole, often called LWOP. That means the person will die in prison, but not by the state's hand.
That distinction matters for two reasons.
First, Gavin Newsom said the action does not repeal California's death penalty and applies only to current death sentences. A future jury could still impose a death sentence in a future case, unless voters or the Legislature change the law. The commuted sentences themselves, however, cannot be reinstated by the next governor.
Second, LWOP is already the practical reality California has lived with for 20 years. The most recent execution in California was in 2006, when the state put Clarence Ray Allen, 76, to death by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison. For families, that creates a strange split: legally, the death sentence was still on the books. Practically, no one had been executed in two decades.
Why Gavin Newsom says he did it now
Gavin Newsom is nearing the end of his second and final term and leaves office in January. He said he was compelled to follow his conscience before he leaves office, writing that the clemency power "exists for moments when law as applied cannot be squared with justice" and "for me, this is that moment."
His stated reasons are familiar from his 2019 moratorium order:
Error and irreversibility. Gavin Newsom has argued California's system cannot be fairly applied and has resulted in the conviction of innocent people. Nationally, at least 203 people have been released from death rows around the country since 1976 based on evidence of innocence, including eight in California.
Racial and economic disparity. As of April of this year, 68% of people under a death sentence in California were defendants of color, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The ACLU praised the decision as a step toward ending a punishment it called "racist, error-prone, and inhumane."
Cost and dysfunction. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, California has spent $6 billion on the death penalty since 1978 while carrying out just 13 executions in that time. Supporters of commutation, including Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton, argue commuting will save taxpayers hundreds of millions over the long term and let the state invest in policies proven to improve public safety.
A shrinking system. Only five people received death sentences in 2025, down from 42 in 1999. In other words, prosecutors were already seeking death far less often, even before this decision.
How California got here
California has had a tangled relationship with capital punishment for 50 years.
Voters reinstated the current death penalty statute when they approved Proposition 7 in 1978. Since then, California has carried out 13 executions, a small fraction of the 602 carried out in Texas.
In November 2016, California voters voted against Proposition 62, which sought to abolish the death penalty. Instead, voters approved Proposition 66, which was meant to speed up the execution process.
Shortly after taking office in 2019, Gavin Newsom signed an executive order establishing a moratorium. At the time he said, "Our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure. It has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or can't afford expensive legal representation."
The moratorium stopped executions, but it did not change sentences. That is why this week's move is different. A moratorium can be reversed by the next governor. A commutation, once finalized, is permanent for those 548 people.
What changes for the people on death row
For the 548 people, the day-to-day change is not freedom. It is a change in legal status and, eventually, housing.
They will no longer be under a sentence of death. Their direct appeals tied to that death sentence will end. They will be transferred out of condemned housing over time and into general LWOP housing. They will still have no parole date, no parole hearing, and no path to release through parole.
That is why supporters of the death penalty and opponents of it both sometimes use the same phrase: LWOP means they will die in prison. They just disagree on whether that is enough.
Critics of the decision point out that the change also removes a layer of legal process that victims' families had counted on: the right to be heard at future death penalty appeals, execution-related hearings, and clemency reviews specific to a death sentence. Supporters counter that those hearings were themselves a source of repeated trauma, because every appeal date forced families to relive the crime.
What it means for victims: there is no single victim experience
This is the part that gets flattened in national headlines, and it should not be.
Victims' families are not a monolith. They disagree, sometimes fiercely, about what justice looks like. That disagreement was on full display within hours of the announcement.
For families who wanted the death sentence carried out
For many families, the death sentence was not abstract. It was the verdict a jury reached after weeks of testimony. It was the promise the system made after the worst day of their lives.
The California District Attorneys Association said it "strongly condemned" the decision, calling it a "profound disregard for the decisions of juries and judges, the rights of crime victims and the repeatedly expressed will of California voters." Its president said the sentences "were not handed down lightly," with Californians sitting through weeks of testimony, weighing evidence and deciding on an appropriate punishment.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer called the commutation "mercy for the wolves" and said it inflicts "the ultimate act of cruelty on the sheep," adding, "Today, the voices of criminals are louder than the cries of victims."
Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said his office was not contacted before the announcement and criticized the governor for choosing a sweeping action "without meaningful consultation with prosecutors or victims' families."
Families echoed that sense of being blindsided.
Steve Herr, whose son Sam Herr along with his friend Julie Kibuishi were murdered by Daniel Wozniak in Costa Mesa in 2010, called Gavin Newsom a "coward" and said he was feeling "extreme anger." He said Gavin Newsom's office did not contact his family before the announcement.
"If he went case by case and said, 'Steve I'm commuting Dan Wozniak because I don't believe in the death penalty,' I would be pissed, I wouldn't agree with him but at least I would respect him to face the families he's doing this to," Herr said. "This blanket commutation is a cowardly way out."
Phyllis Loya, the mother of Pittsburg police Officer Larry Lasater, who was shot and killed on April 23, 2005, was described as breaking down in tears and feeling immense anger at the decision to commute her son's killer.
Mark Klaas, father of Polly Klaas, said in interviews that the decision felt like a slap, and was quoted as saying Gavin Newsom "gave the gift of life to [hundreds of] people who took the gift of life from their victims." In a separate report, he said he now doubts the criminal justice system will keep promises of life without parole.
Crime Survivors, a victims advocacy group, said, "Our hearts break for every family feeling revictimized by this decision. You deserve to be heard, respected, and your loved ones will always be remembered."
For these families, three harms keep coming up:
Revictimization: Hearing the news on television or social media, without personal notice, can reopen trauma that had been managed, sometimes for decades.
Erasure of the jury: A blanket action, they argue, treats very different crimes as if they were the same, and overrides what 12 people decided after hearing the evidence.
Loss of voice: California's Marsy's Law, passed by voters in 2008, expanded victims' rights to notice and to be heard. Critics argue a mass commutation without case-by-case consultation violates the spirit of that law, even if courts have previously held that Marsy's Law does not extend to the governor's clemency power in the same way it does to parole proceedings.
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