California Governor Gavin Newsom Commutes All 548 Death Sentences in Largest Mass Clemency in US History

Introduction

California has the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere, and on Thursday, November 5, 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom moved to empty it in a single act. In a three-page open letter addressed to all Californians, Newsom announced that he is commuting the death sentences of all 548 people on the state’s death row, converting every one of those sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks capital punishment across the United States, described the action as the largest mass commutation in American history, a grant of clemency on a scale no governor has attempted before. Newsom’s office said the group covered by the order includes 529 men and 19 women, all of them currently condemned to execution in a state that has not carried out an execution in more than twenty years.

The announcement lands in the final weeks of Newsom’s time as governor, and it immediately became one of the most consequential clemency decisions in the modern history of the death penalty in the United States. It does not abolish capital punishment in California, which voters have twice chosen to keep, and it does not free anyone. What it does, if it survives the review that California law requires, is remove the threat of execution from every person currently on the state’s death row, including under any future governor. About a third of the commutations take effect at once, while the rest must be reviewed by the California Supreme Court, because the prisoners involved have more than one felony conviction. That review, and the legal questions around it, will decide how much of Newsom’s order stands, and how quickly. In a single stroke, Newsom commutes 548 California death sentences November 2026, emptying the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere and setting up a court review that will decide whether the clemency stands.

1. The announcement and what Newsom ordered

Newsom announced the decision on Thursday, November 5, 2026, in an open letter to the people of California, a format he chose for a decision he described as a matter of the state’s values. The announcement was reported the same day by Reuters, the Associated Press and the New York Times, and the Death Penalty Information Center published a detailed account of the order within hours. The timing was deliberate in one respect: Newsom is nearing the end of his second and final four-year term as governor, and the commutation is among the last major acts of his eight years in office. It is also the most far-reaching use of the governor’s clemency power in California’s history, covering the whole of the condemned population rather than a single case or a small group.

The order itself is simple in its terms and sweeping in its reach. Every death sentence currently in force in California is commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That means the 548 people covered by the order will remain in prison for the rest of their lives, but the state will no longer seek to execute them. Newsom’s office made clear that the action applies to the current death row population only. Prosecutors in California can still seek the death penalty in future cases, and the punishment remains available as a sentence under state law unless voters or the legislature repeal it.

1.1 The open letter to all Californians

Newsom set out his decision in a three-page letter addressed to “all Californians,” a document his office released alongside the announcement. In it, he wrote: “I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes all of us.” The letter framed the commutation as an exercise of the governor’s constitutional clemency authority, the same power every California governor holds, used here at a scale no predecessor had attempted.

The letter also drew a careful line that Newsom has drawn before. He acknowledged that his clemency “does not repeal” the death penalty and does not reach future sentences, and he wrote that “the power to repeal the death penalty rests with the Legislature and voters.” That distinction matters, because California’s death penalty was put in place by a ballot referendum, and the Death Penalty Information Center noted that it can only be repealed by another vote of the people. Newsom was, in effect, using the one power he does hold, clemency for people already sentenced, while leaving the law itself untouched.

1.2 Life without parole, not freedom

It is important to be clear about what the commutation does and does not do, because the distinction has been at the centre of the public reaction. No one covered by the order is being released. Every one of the 548 sentences becomes life in prison without the possibility of parole, which means the people concerned will die in prison, but not by the state’s hand. Newsom himself put it in those terms, saying, in words reported after the announcement, “These offenders will die in prison but not by our hand.” The sentence is the harshest punishment California can impose short of execution, and it leaves no route back to freedom.

That framing is also the answer Newsom’s supporters have given to the argument that clemency is soft on the most serious crimes. The people on California’s death row were convicted of murder, in many cases murder with aggravating circumstances that made them eligible for the death penalty in the first place. Their sentences are being changed, but their punishment is not being ended. What changes is the method and the finality of it: the state will no longer kill them, and the risk that an innocent person is executed, a risk Newsom has repeatedly cited, is removed for this group entirely.

2. The scale of a decision without precedent

The numbers behind Newsom’s order are what make it historic, and they are worth setting out in full, because they show how far outside the normal pattern of clemency this decision sits. California’s death row, at 548 people, is the largest in the United States and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. It is so large that commuting it in one act reduces the entire death row population of the United States by nearly 30 percent, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. About 1,388 people now remain under sentence of death across the country, the lowest number since 1984, and the New York Times reported that Newsom’s action cancels roughly a quarter of all death sentences nationwide.

The scale is also historic when measured against the record of clemency itself. The Death Penalty Information Center reported that by granting clemency to 548 people, Newsom has more than doubled the total number of clemencies granted in capital cases in the last fifty years. The previous largest single mass commutation in American history was the decision by Illinois Governor George Ryan in 2003, when he commuted 167 death sentences. Newsom’s order is more than three times that size. The centre also noted that this is the eighth time in the modern era of the death penalty that a governor has granted clemency to all death-sentenced people in their state, but no previous governor has done so for a population anywhere near this large.

2.1 548 people on the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere

The 548 people covered by the order are the entire population of California’s death row as it stood on November 5, 2026. According to figures provided by Newsom’s office, 529 of them are men and 19 are women. They are held at San Quentin, the prison that has housed California’s condemned population for generations, and their cases span decades of convictions, appeals and delays. Many have been on death row for twenty years or more, caught in a system of appeals and court reviews that has moved so slowly that the state has not executed anyone since January 17, 2006.

The size of the population is itself a product of California’s history with the death penalty. Voters reinstated capital punishment in 1978, and the state has sentenced hundreds of people to death since then, while carrying out only 13 executions in that whole period. The result is a death row that kept growing even as executions effectively stopped, a backlog that became a defining feature of the state’s criminal justice system. Newsom’s order addresses that backlog in the most direct way available to a governor: by changing the sentences themselves, rather than by waiting for the courts or the legislature to act.

2.2 A record that more than doubles fifty years of clemencies

The comparison with Governor Ryan’s 2003 commutation in Illinois shows how unusual Newsom’s decision is. Ryan, a Republican, emptied Illinois’ death row in his final days in office, commuting 167 sentences after a series of wrongful convictions in the state exposed deep flaws in the system. His decision was considered extraordinary at the time, and it remains one of the most discussed clemency acts in American history. Newsom’s order covers more than three times as many people, and it comes in a state whose death row is several times larger than Illinois’ ever was.

The Death Penalty Information Center’s finding that Newsom’s single action more than doubles all the clemencies granted in capital cases in the last half century puts the same point in a different way. Clemency in death penalty cases has historically been rare, granted one case at a time and usually near the end of a governor’s term. Newsom has turned it into a single, wholesale act, and in doing so he has changed the national picture of the death penalty in a day. The national death row population, already at its lowest level since 1984, has fallen by nearly a third in one stroke, and California, long the state with the most people condemned to die, now has none.

3. Why the California Supreme Court still has a say

For all its sweep, Newsom’s order is not self-executing in every case. California’s constitution places a limit on the governor’s clemency power that will shape how much of the order takes effect, and how quickly. The constitution requires the state Supreme Court to review clemency granted to any offender who has been twice convicted of a felony, and that requirement covers a large share of the people on death row. The result is that the commutation will take effect immediately for about a third of the 548, while the remaining two-thirds must wait for the court to act before their commutations are final.

The figures reported after the announcement give the scale of that review. Newsom’s office said the court would have to approve 382 of the commutations, or roughly 70 percent of the total, because those prisoners have additional felony convictions. The Death Penalty Information Center put the split in similar terms, saying the grant will apply immediately to about one-third of death row prisoners, with the remaining two-thirds reviewed by the court before the commutations are final. For the court to approve a commutation, four justices must support it, a threshold that means the review is a real check rather than a formality.

3.1 The two-thirds of cases that need court review

The court review exists because of a provision in the California Constitution designed to stop governors from using clemency to free repeat offenders without oversight. When a prisoner has two or more felony convictions, the governor’s clemency grant is not final until the Supreme Court has reviewed it and given its approval. That rule applies to pardons and commutations alike, and it has been part of California law for decades. In ordinary clemency cases, which usually involve one person at a time, the review is a routine step. In this case, the court is being asked to review 382 commutations at once, a workload without precedent.

What the court will be asked to decide is not whether the death penalty is right or wrong, but whether each commutation should be allowed to stand under the constitution. The justices will review the cases in the light of the prisoners’ records, and they have the power to refuse individual commutations if they conclude that the clemency should not be granted. That means the final number of commutations that take effect could be lower than 548, and it means the order will be implemented in stages, with the roughly 166 cases that need no review taking effect at once and the rest following as the court works through them.

3.2 What happens if the court refuses some commutations

If the Supreme Court declines to approve some of the commutations, those prisoners would remain under sentence of death, even though the governor has ordered their sentences changed. That is the central uncertainty hanging over the order, and it is why the reporting after the announcement was careful to describe the commutation as announced rather than completed. The court has not yet said how it will handle a review of this size, or how long it will take, and there is no recent example of a mass commutation being put through the review process in California.

Legal experts quoted in the coverage noted that the review requirement also creates a possible route for legal challenges. Opponents of the order could argue that a wholesale commutation of this size goes beyond what the clemency power was intended to cover, or they could challenge individual commutations as they come before the court. Newsom’s office has presented the order as a straightforward exercise of the governor’s constitutional authority, and the fact that the constitution itself provides for court review suggests the framers anticipated that clemency would be checked rather than blocked outright. But until the court begins its work, the legal fate of the 382 cases remains open, and it is the single most important unanswered question in the story.

4. Newsom’s reasons for acting now

Newsom has been an opponent of the death penalty for his whole political career, and the reasons he gave for the commutation are the same ones he has given since he first took office as governor. In his open letter, he called state-sanctioned killing “incompatible with California’s values” and said it “undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes all of us.” That moral argument, that the state should not kill its own citizens even when they have committed terrible crimes, has been the core of his position since he declared a moratorium on executions in March 2019, about two months after he first took office.

But the letter and the announcement also rested on three practical arguments that Newsom has made repeatedly: that the death penalty is applied unfairly, with persistent racial discrimination in who is sentenced to die; that it is enormously expensive, costing the state far more than life imprisonment because of the decades of appeals it generates; and that it carries the risk of human error, including the risk of executing an innocent person. The Death Penalty Information Center noted all three concerns in its account of the decision, recalling that Newsom cited them when he imposed the moratorium in 2019 and called the death penalty a “failure” at that time.

4.1 The moral case in his own words

Newsom’s moral argument is not new, but the commutation gives it a finality that the moratorium did not. A moratorium pauses executions; it can be lifted by a future governor. A commutation changes the sentence itself, and once the court has approved it, it cannot be undone by the next person to hold the office. By choosing clemency rather than another executive order, Newsom has made his position permanent for the current death row population, and he has done so in language that leaves little room for doubt about where he stands. “These offenders will die in prison but not by our hand,” he said, in words reported after the announcement, a sentence that captures both the severity of the punishment that remains and the line he is drawing around the state’s power to kill.

That language also reflects the way Newsom has talked about the death penalty throughout his career. As mayor of San Francisco and as lieutenant governor, he opposed capital punishment, and as governor he has described it as a punishment that falls unevenly and fails to deliver what its supporters promise. The open letter is the fullest statement of that view he has made in office, and it is written as a document for the public record, addressed to all Californians rather than to lawyers or legislators, which suggests he intended it to be read as a statement of principle as much as a legal order.

4.2 Race, cost and the risk of human error

The three practical arguments Newsom has relied on are well documented in the research on capital punishment in the United States. Studies have repeatedly found that the death penalty is applied unevenly, with race playing a role in who is charged with a capital crime and who is sentenced to die, and Newsom cited “serious concerns about persistent racial discrimination” when he imposed the moratorium in 2019. California’s own death row reflects those disparities, and the governor’s office has pointed to them as part of the case for clemency. The argument is not that any individual sentence was the product of discrimination, but that a system which produces such disparities cannot be trusted with an irreversible punishment.

The cost argument is more straightforward. Death penalty cases cost the state far more than other murder cases, because of the lengthy trials, the automatic appeals and the decades of litigation that follow a death sentence. California has spent billions of dollars on a system that has produced only 13 executions since 1978, and Newsom has argued that the money would be better spent on victims’ services, on solving crimes and on preventing violence. The risk of error is the most powerful of the three arguments, and it is the one that has driven clemency decisions in other states. Illinois’ Governor Ryan acted after a series of wrongful convictions, and the possibility that an innocent person could be executed has been cited by governors of both parties as a reason to step back from the death penalty.

5. A death row that had not executed anyone in twenty years

To understand why Newsom’s order matters, it helps to understand the strange position California’s death penalty had reached before he acted. The state had the largest death row in the country, and at the same time it had effectively stopped executing people. No one has been executed in California since January 17, 2006, a gap of more than twenty years, and the last executions took place before many of the people now on death row were even sentenced. The system continued to sentence people to death, and the courts continued to hear their appeals, but the final step, the execution itself, had not happened for a generation.

That gap was not an accident. It was the product of legal challenges to the state’s lethal injection procedures, of court orders blocking executions, and of the sheer slowness of the appeals process in capital cases. A death sentence in California typically takes decades to work its way through the courts, and many of the people on death row have been there for twenty years or more. The result was a punishment that existed on paper but was not carried out, a situation that critics on both sides of the debate described as broken: supporters of the death penalty said it made a mockery of the sentences the courts had imposed, while opponents said it kept hundreds of people in a state of uncertainty for decades.

5.1 The 2019 moratorium and the dismantled chamber

Newsom took his first step against the death penalty about two months into his first term as governor, in March 2019, when he declared a moratorium on executions and called the death penalty a “failure.” The moratorium ordered a halt to all executions while he remained in office, and it was followed by the dismantling of the lethal injection equipment at San Quentin, the prison where executions were carried out. The message was clear: as long as Newsom was governor, no one would be executed in California, whatever the courts had ordered.

The moratorium was an executive action, and like all executive actions it could have been reversed by a future governor. That was always its weakness as a means of ending the death penalty, and it is the reason the commutation matters in a way the moratorium did not. A commutation changes the sentence, and once it is approved by the court, it stands regardless of who holds the governor’s office. Newsom’s decision to move from a moratorium to a mass commutation in his final weeks in office reflects that logic: he is using the power he has now to make a change that cannot be undone later.

5.2 Voters kept the death penalty on the books

The reason Newsom could not simply abolish the death penalty is that California’s voters have twice chosen to keep it. In 2012 and again in 2016, ballot measures to abolish capital punishment were put to the people, and on both occasions voters rejected them. In 2016, voters not only rejected abolition but also approved a separate measure designed to reform and speed up the appeals process, a sign that many Californians wanted the system to work faster rather than to disappear. Because the death penalty was put in place by a ballot referendum, the Death Penalty Information Center noted, it can only be repealed by another ballot referendum, and Newsom has acknowledged that the power to repeal it “rests with the Legislature and voters.”

That history is important context for the commutation, because it shows the limits of what a governor can do on his own. Newsom has not repealed the death penalty, and he has not claimed the power to do so. What he has done is to use clemency, the one power the constitution gives him over individual sentences, to remove the death penalty for everyone currently sentenced to it. The law stays on the books, prosecutors can still seek death sentences in new cases, and a future governor could allow executions to resume for people sentenced after this order. But for the 548 people covered by the order, the death penalty is over, subject only to the court’s review.

6. The politics of a departing governor

The timing of the commutation is impossible to separate from the politics of Newsom’s final weeks in office. He is nearing the end of his second and final four-year term as governor, a term that expires when he steps down on January 4, 2027, and he is widely reported to be considering a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. Reuters, reporting the announcement, described him as “a Democrat who is expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination in 2028,” and the Associated Press noted that the decision comes “as he prepares to leave office after eight years and considers a run for president.” The commutation is, in that light, both a final act as governor and a statement of the values he would carry into a national campaign.

It is also a decision that carries political risk. The death penalty remains popular with a significant part of the American public, and a governor who empties the largest death row in the country is taking a position that his opponents will use against him. Newsom has never hidden his opposition to capital punishment, and his supporters argue that the commutation is consistent with everything he has said on the subject for years. But in a national campaign, the decision will be presented by his critics as evidence that he is out of step with voters who support the death penalty, and the way he defends it may become one of the defining questions of any presidential run.

6.1 The end of Newsom’s two terms in office

Newsom’s eight years as governor have been defined by a series of high-profile decisions on issues that divide the country, from climate change to abortion rights to gun control, and the commutation fits that pattern. He served as mayor of San Francisco before becoming lieutenant governor, and he won the governorship in 2018, surviving a recall attempt in 2021 and winning re-election in 2022. His time in office has been marked by a willingness to use California as a counterweight to the federal government, and the death penalty decision is the latest example of that approach.

The commutation also reflects the freedom that comes with a governor’s final weeks in office. Newsom no longer faces re-election in California, and the political cost of the decision falls on him at a moment when he has nothing left to lose in the state. That is a familiar pattern in American politics: governors have often used their final days to grant clemency, and George Ryan’s mass commutation in Illinois came in his last days in office as well. Newsom’s decision is larger, but it follows the same logic, that a departing governor can act on conscience in a way that a governor facing re-election might not.

6.2 Becerra inherits the moratorium

The man who will inherit the consequences of the commutation is Xavier Becerra, the governor-elect who will take over from Newsom in January. Becerra, a Democrat who previously served as California’s attorney general, has said he will extend the state’s moratorium on the death penalty, which means executions will not resume under his administration either. But his record on the issue is more complicated than Newsom’s. As attorney general, Becerra defended death sentences in court, a role that required him to argue for the very punishment Newsom is now commuting, and he has not pledged to abolish the death penalty, only to keep the moratorium in place.

That distinction matters for the future of capital punishment in California. Becerra will take office with a death row that has been emptied by his predecessor, subject to the court’s review, and a law that still allows prosecutors to seek new death sentences. Whether new death sentences are imposed, and whether the moratorium survives beyond his term, will depend on decisions he has not yet had to make. For now, the practical effect of Newsom’s order is that Becerra will begin his governorship without the question of executions hanging over his first months in office, and without the need to decide the fate of 548 people himself.

7. Reaction: support, questions and the road ahead

The reaction to Newsom’s announcement was swift, and it reflected the deep divisions that capital punishment still provokes in the United States. Support for the decision came from an unusually broad coalition, including murder victims’ families, law enforcement leaders and civil rights advocates, according to a release from Clemency California that was cited in the coverage of the announcement. That breadth matters, because it cuts against the assumption that opposition to the death penalty comes only from one side of the political spectrum. Families of murder victims, who are often assumed to support executions, were among those who backed the commutation, and their support was highlighted by the governor’s allies as evidence that the decision reflects a wider shift in attitudes.

The support also reflects the way the debate about the death penalty has changed in recent years. Public support for capital punishment has fallen from its peak, and a growing number of states have abolished it or stopped carrying out executions. California, which once embodied the toughest approach to violent crime, is now the state that has taken the largest single step away from the death penalty in American history, and the coalition that supported the decision includes people who would once have been counted among the punishment’s defenders. That shift is part of the story, and it is one of the reasons the commutation is likely to be debated long after Newsom leaves office.

7.1 Families, law enforcement and civil rights leaders back the move

The release from Clemency California, reported alongside the announcement, said that murder victims’ families, law enforcement and civil rights leaders support Newsom’s decision to commute the death sentences. That combination is significant, because each of those groups brings a different reason for opposing the death penalty. Families of victims have argued that the decades of appeals in capital cases prolong their suffering, keeping them tied to the courts for twenty years or more while the sentence is never carried out. Life without parole, they have said, brings a finality that the death penalty, with its endless appeals, does not.

Law enforcement leaders who supported the decision have made a different argument, that the death penalty does not deter crime and that the resources spent on capital cases would be better used to solve crimes and prevent violence. Civil rights leaders have focused on the racial disparities in who is sentenced to death, and on the risk that an innocent person will be executed. Together, those arguments form the case that Newsom made in his letter, and the fact that they were voiced by the groups most directly affected by violent crime gives the commutation a political weight that a purely moral argument might not have carried on its own.

7.2 The legal questions that still have to be answered

For all the support the decision received, the legal questions around it have not been answered, and they will shape the story in the weeks and months ahead. The first question is the court review itself: how the California Supreme Court will handle 382 commutations at once, how long it will take, and whether it will approve them all. The second question is whether opponents of the order will mount legal challenges, arguing either that a mass commutation of this size exceeds the governor’s clemency power or that individual commutations should be blocked. The reporting after the announcement noted that the order “could draw legal challenges,” and legal experts said the review process itself would be the first test.

A third question concerns the future. The death penalty remains on the books in California, and prosecutors can still seek it in new cases, which means the commutation does not settle the issue for the state. If a future governor lifts the moratorium and a new death row begins to form, the debate will return, and the question of whether California should keep the death penalty will be decided, as Newsom himself acknowledged, by the legislature and the voters. The commutation is a historic act, but it is not a final settlement, and its long-term significance will depend on what happens next, in the courts and in the politics of the state.

8. What remains unconfirmed and what to watch next

Several important parts of this story are still unconfirmed, and they should be stated plainly. The first is the fate of the 382 commutations that require California Supreme Court review. The court has not yet begun its work, it has not said how it will handle a review of this size, and it has not given any indication of how long the process will take or whether it will approve every commutation. Until the court acts, the commutation is announced rather than completed for roughly 70 percent of the people it covers, and the final number could be lower than 548.

The second unconfirmed matter is whether legal challenges will be filed, and if so, on what grounds and with what effect. The reporting noted that the order could draw challenges, but no challenge had been reported at the time of the announcement, and it is not yet known whether any will be brought, or whether a court would entertain one. The third is Newsom’s own political future. He is reported to be considering a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, but he has not formally announced a campaign, and the way the commutation plays in national politics will only become clear if and when he does.

8.1 The court review and the timeline

The most important thing to watch in the coming weeks is the California Supreme Court’s handling of the review. The court will need to decide how to process 382 commutations, whether it reviews them individually or as a group, and how quickly it can work through them. The roughly 166 commutations that need no review take effect immediately, but the rest depend on the court, and the timeline for their completion is unknown. Any refusal by the court to approve a commutation would leave that prisoner under sentence of death, and any delay would leave the order partly unimplemented for months.

The review will also be watched as a test of the clemency power itself. California’s constitution gives the governor the power to commute sentences and gives the court a role in reviewing clemency for repeat offenders, but it does not spell out how that review should work when the governor commutes hundreds of sentences at once. The court’s approach will set a precedent, not only for this order but for any future governor who considers a similar act, and lawyers on both sides of the death penalty debate will be watching closely for the reasoning the justices give.

8.2 What to watch next

Beyond the court, there are several developments to watch. The first is any response from prosecutors and victims’ groups, and whether organised opposition to the order emerges in the days after the announcement. The second is the transition to Governor-elect Becerra in January, and whether he says anything more about his plans for the moratorium and for the death penalty in general. The third is Newsom’s own next step, and whether the commutation is followed by a formal announcement about 2028.

The wider picture is also worth watching. The national death row population is now at its lowest level since 1984, and California’s decision removes nearly a third of it in a single act. Other states with large death rows will be watching to see whether Newsom’s order survives its court review, and whether the political cost he pays, if any, discourages or encourages other governors to act. The coming weeks will provide the answers, and the court’s review will be the first of them.

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