By emptying death row, Newsom broke a promise and disregarded the will of voters

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to commute the death sentences of 548 inmates just weeks before he leaves office is the latest episode in California’s 70-year-long political, legal and philosophical debate over capital punishment.

It also adds complexity, because Newsom’s unilateral efforts to stop executions violate promises he made while running for governor to honor voters’ support of the death penalty.

While Newsom’s actions might bolster his standing among center-left Democratic voters in a potential presidential campaign, a Pew Research Center poll in August found 68% of Americans see the death penalty as justified for those who commit murder. That’s 6 percentage points higher than the support in a 2021 poll.

A little history: California adopted capital punishment about when it became a state in 1850, but initially executions were done by counties. The state took over in 1893, and since then 514 people have been put to death, according to state records.

Serious efforts to abolish California’s death penalty date from the 1950s, when Caryl Chessman, dubbed the “Red Light Bandit,” faced execution for a series of robberies and sexual assaults — but no murders — in the 1940s and became a symbol for death penalty opponents.

Chessman’s fate finally landed with Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, who personally opposed capital punishment. In 1960, on the eve of Chessman’s execution, Brown’s 21-year-old son, Jerry, pleaded for a reprieve and urged him to seek legislative repeal. The elder Brown agreed but the Legislature balked, and Chessman was executed on May 2, 1960.

During the 1970s, California’s death penalty underwent a dizzying series of legal and political moves — sometimes in effect, sometimes not, depending on the latest decree from the state Supreme Court, action by the Legislature or ballot measure.

Voters had the last word in a 1978 pro-death-penalty ballot measure. However, Jerry Brown, who had become governor, appointed several members of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Rose Bird, who consistently rejected death sentences. Voters ousted Bird and two other justices in 1986.

Executions resumed in the 1990s, and there have been 13 since. The last was triple murderer Clarence Ray Allen in 2006.

In 2012 and again in 2016, voters rejected ballot measures to repeal the death penalty while passing a 2016 measure aimed at speeding up capital punishment appeals.

Enter Newsom, who was elected lieutenant governor in 2010 and obviously wanted to become governor. In 2016, when asked about the death penalty by the Modesto Bee, Newsom said he would “be accountable to the will of the voters” if elected governor.

“I would not get my personal opinions in the way of the public’s right to make a determination of where they want to take us,” he said.

While campaigning in 2018, Newsom said he didn’t “want to get ahead of the will of the voters” and wanted to “give the voters a chance to reconsider.”

However, shortly after inauguration in 2019, Newsom issued a moratorium on executions but ducked questions about asking voters to repeal capital punishment, which would have been the honorable way to proceed. Instead he waited until the final weeks of his governorship to commute death sentences, subject to state Supreme Court ratification of some cases.

“I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundation of our legal system, and diminishes each of us,” Newsom said in an open letter. “I know we cannot execute people in our imperfect legal system and remain true to our core values, first among them justice and human decency.”

Newsom insists he respects voters, “but the constitution also gave every governor clemency authority, and that power exists for moments when law as applied cannot be squared with justice. For me, this is that moment.”

The authority he cites was aimed at righting perceived injustices on a case-by-case basis.

Newsom’s blanket clemency distorts that process, thumbs his nose at California voters and dishonors victims of horrendous crimes and their grieving families.

We’ll learn whether it also impacts his presumed presidential ambitions.