Newsom faces pressure to commute all 564 California death sentences before leaving office

Gavin Newsom halted executions, hauled the chair out of San Quentin's gas chamber, and dismantled California's death row. What he has not done — and what advocacy groups are now urgently demanding he do before his term ends in January 2027 — is commute a single death sentence.

A joint analysis by The Marshall Project and CalMatters, published in September 2026, put the scale of the decision in stark terms: 546 men and 18 women remain under active death sentences in California, representing roughly a quarter of every condemned prisoner in the United States. Advocacy groups, both domestic and international, are pressing Newsom to commute all of those sentences to life without the possibility of parole before he leaves office.

Newsom has not announced any such plan. His office has not confirmed it is even under consideration. In the meantime, the state's death penalty exists in a condition that Marshall Project journalists Maurice Chammah and Jill Castellano described as 'a bloated, dysfunctional system that satisfies virtually nobody' — not abolitionists who want the punishment gone, and not supporters who want sentences carried out.

a bloated, dysfunctional system that satisfies virtually nobody— Maurice Chammah and Jill Castellano, The Marshall Project

The irony of Newsom's position is one he has acknowledged himself. Before taking office, he told CalMatters he had urged then-Governor Jerry Brown to resolve the death penalty question once and for all. Brown did not act, and the unresolved question passed to Newsom — who has now held it for nearly two full terms without granting clemency to a single condemned prisoner.

That restraint is not for lack of clemency activity overall. As of September 2026, the California Supreme Court — whose approval is a constitutional prerequisite for anyone twice convicted of a felony — has approved 20 of Newsom's requests to commute life-without-parole sentences. His overall clemency record stands at 105 approvals against zero court rejections, according to appellate firm Horvitz and Levy, which tracks the court's recommendations. But none of those 105 grants involved a death row prisoner.

The legal path to mass commutations would be formidable. Because many death row prisoners have prior felony convictions, each commutation in those cases would require a California Supreme Court recommendation — a process that, applied to hundreds of prisoners, would be without precedent. No death-sentenced person in California's modern death penalty era has ever received clemency. The last governor to commute a death sentence was Ronald Reagan, who spared Calvin Thomas in 1967, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The moratorium Newsom signed in March 2019 stopped executions and closed the execution chamber, but it did not touch the sentences themselves. District attorneys have continued to seek death sentences throughout. At least 25 people have been condemned since the 2019 order, with 11 of those cases coming from Riverside County alone, according to the Marshall Project and CalMatters analysis. Five new death sentences were handed down in 2025.

In Los Angeles, the pressure is moving in the opposite direction. District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who ousted progressive predecessor George Gascón last year, reversed Gascón's ban on seeking the death penalty in January 2026. Under Hochman's new policy, prosecutors may pursue capital punishment in what his office described as 'exceedingly rare cases' and the 'most egregious.' Los Angeles County currently accounts for 206 of California's condemned prisoners — the largest share of any county — and has been responsible for 29 percent of new death sentences imposed statewide since 1972.

I remain unwaveringly committed to the comprehensive and thorough evaluation of every special circumstance murder case prosecuted in Los Angeles County.— Nathan Hochman, Los Angeles District Attorney

The racial dimensions of California's death penalty add weight to the clemency argument. As of 2025, 68 percent of people under a death sentence in the state were defendants of color; in Los Angeles County, that figure reached 75 percent. Between 2005 and 2025, nine out of ten death sentences imposed on defendants aged 18 to 20 were given to people of color, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Court documents disclosed in 2024 confirmed that Alameda County prosecutors categorized jurors by race and religion to guide jury exclusions in capital cases from the 1980s through at least the late 2000s.

California's Racial Justice Act, signed by Newsom in 2020 and made retroactive in 2022, gives death-sentenced prisoners a legal avenue to seek relief from convictions or sentences obtained on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin. The law was amended again in 2025 to expand access to counsel and make it easier to bring claims — but that process unfolds case by case, not in a single sweep.

What happens if Newsom leaves office without acting is itself a live political question. Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra, who supported the death penalty during his tenure as attorney general, has said he would maintain the moratorium if elected governor. Republican candidate Steve Hilton has said he would lift it — even though he says he personally opposes capital punishment. Ending new death sentences entirely would require voters to repeal the punishment through a statewide ballot measure, something that has not gained sufficient traction: a 2012 repeal measure drew 48 percent support, and a 2016 measure drew 46 percent.

Newsom is widely reported to be considering a run for the White House in 2028, a context that makes any decision on mass commutations politically loaded. For now, hundreds of prisoners, their families, and the families of their victims remain in the legal limbo that has defined California's death penalty for the better part of two decades — waiting for a resolution that may not come until a new governor takes office.

Why it matters — California holds roughly a quarter of the nation's condemned prisoners, and whether Newsom acts or not before January 2027 will shape the future of capital punishment in the largest U.S. state — and potentially define his political legacy.

Sources differ on Total number of condemned prisoners in California: 564 (546 men + 18 women) (hsjchronicle.com) vs 592 (westnet.ca)

Reported by themarshallproject.org, deathpenaltyinfo.org, hsjchronicle.com, horvitzlevy.com, westnet.ca