Newsom Commutes All 548 California Death Sentences In Record Clemency

California Gov. Gavin Newsom commuted the death sentences of all 548 inmates on the state's death row Thursday, converting every one of them to life without parole — the largest mass commutation of death row inmates in American history. One politician, facing no re-election, just unilaterally voided the sentences handed down by juries in nearly a quarter of all capital cases in the United States.

Newsom is term-limited and widely expected to mount a 2028 presidential run. He imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019 and has now made that moratorium permanent, insulating it from any future governor who might actually enforce the law California voters have repeatedly affirmed at the ballot box.

Among the 548: Marcus Wesson, who murdered nine of his own children in 2004 — three of them under age two — and is believed to have fathered several of the dead with his own daughters and nieces. Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped 12-year-old Polly Klaas from her slumber party at knifepoint in 1993; her body was found months later. Isauro Aguirre, convicted in 2017 of torturing and killing his eight-year-old son, who suffered beatings, BB-gun shootings, starvation, and blunt-force trauma before dying. All three had their sentences wiped out by Newsom's pen.