California Has One-Quarter Of All The Nation’s Death Sentences. Will Newsom Commute Them All?

When Governor Gavin Newsom halted executions in California in 2019, the imagery was hard to forget: the lethal injection gurney and the gas chamber chair, hauled out of San Quentin State Prison and driven away. For many Californians, including plenty here in Santa Barbara, it felt like capital punishment in the state was effectively finished.

It isn't. As CalMatters and the Santa Barbara Independent reported this month, 546 men and 18 women remain under death sentences in California — more than any other state, and roughly a quarter of everyone facing execution in the United States. And with Newsom set to leave office in January, a question that once seemed hypothetical is suddenly urgent: will he commute them all?

A System That Satisfies Nobody

California's death penalty has become, by nearly every account, a machine that grinds without producing. Over five decades, prosecutors have won more than 1,000 death sentences; the state has carried out just 13 executions. The last one was in 2006. More than 200 people have been sentenced to death in the two decades since.

The deadlock, as the CalMatters investigation (a collaboration with The Marshall Project) lays out, is structural: largely Republican counties elect district attorneys who pursue death sentences, while executions rest with governors answerable to a more Democratic electorate. Voters themselves have been split — narrowly defeating ballot propositions in 2012 and 2016 that would have abolished the death penalty outright, while approving a separate 2016 measure meant to speed up appeals that critics say never funded enough defense lawyers to make it work.

The cost of the standoff is staggering. The state spends roughly $200 million per year on legal costs in capital cases, according to a 2025 report by the Habeas Corpus Resource Center cited in the CalMatters story — and most people facing execution are still waiting simply to get a lawyer. Fully staffing every capital case would likely cost more than half a billion dollars.

What the Numbers Reveal

The review of data on some 9,000 U.S. death sentences found inequities in California stretching back 50 years. Death sentences fall disproportionately on Black and Hispanic defendants. Where a crime is committed — which county, which district attorney — often matters more than the severity of the crime itself. And California courts have exonerated or resentenced people to lesser punishments, such as life without parole, at a much lower rate than other states.

These are problems Newsom himself has decried in statements throughout his governorship. "Governor Newsom has been clear about his position on the death penalty since his first year in office, when he ordered a moratorium on executions," spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo wrote in an email to the reporters. "He believes the intentional killing of another person is wrong." The governor declined to answer questions about commutations.

A Once-in-a-Generation Decision

Advocates in California and international human rights groups are pressing Newsom to commute every death sentence before he leaves office, allowing hundreds of people to spend their lives in prison rather than face execution if a pro-death-penalty governor ever takes power. The move would slash the national death row population by more than a quarter — dwarfing comparable actions by other governors and even President Joe Biden, who commuted 37 federal death sentences on his way out.

But Newsom can't simply sign a stack of orders. Under California law, the state Supreme Court must approve commutations for people with multiple felony convictions — and more than half of the relevant cases fall into that category. The bigger obstacle may be political: Newsom is widely expected to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, and a mass commutation would hand his opponents a ready-made attack line, while declining to act would infuriate the abolitionist base that has long supported him.

There's precedent for the dilemma he faces. Right before taking office, Newsom told CalMatters he had urged his predecessor, Jerry Brown, to "solve this." Brown didn't. Now, as the CalMatters piece notes, Newsom sits in exactly the same chair, facing a choice that could backfire no matter which way he turns.

Why It Matters on the Central Coast

For Santa Barbara readers, the story is less abstract than it might seem. Capital cases originating in counties like ours feed directly into the statewide backlog — cases that linger for decades without resolution, consuming court resources and taxpayer dollars while delivering closure to neither victims' families nor the condemned. No California governor has granted clemency to a death row inmate since Ronald Reagan in 1967, which means every one of those 564 sentences hangs on the whim of whoever holds the office next.

Newsom has a handful of months left. Whatever he decides — a sweeping act of clemency, a partial one, or nothing at all — will shape not just California's death row but the national landscape of capital punishment for a generation. The gurney may have left San Quentin, but as this reporting makes clear, the question it represented never did.

This story draws on reporting by Maurice Chammah and Jill Castellano of CalMatters, in collaboration with The Marshall Project, republished by the [Santa Barbara Independent](https://www.independent.com/2026/09/12/california-has-one-quarter-of-all-the-nations-death-sentences-will-newsom-commute-them-all/).