A week after Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he would commute every death sentence in California, the plan faced its first organised legal challenge on Thursday, as the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation announced in Sacramento that it would fight the mass commutation and prosecutors in Los Angeles and Orange counties moved to oppose it before the California Supreme Court.
The foundation announced the challenge at a Thursday afternoon news conference in Sacramento, where its officials were joined by representatives of groups representing crime victims, law enforcement agencies, district attorneys and probation officers, according to City News Service reporting published by MyNewsLA. The foundation's own website also listed a challenge press release dated November 11 under the title 'Victims & Law Enforcement Leaders Challenge Newsom's Mass Commutation.'
Source: MyNewsLA / City News Service
What the challengers are arguing
According to the foundation, Newsom's decision to commute the death sentences of 548 inmates to life in prison without the possibility of parole disregards the will of California voters, who, it said, have repeatedly affirmed their support for the death penalty at the ballot box. In its statement the foundation said the sweeping action overrides repeated decisions by voters and undermines the verdicts of juries and the judgments of courts, and that victims directly affected were not given a voice in the governor's decision.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman backed the challenge in a statement. 'We stand firmly with the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in challenging this arbitrary commutation that sidelines victims' families and disregards the will of California voters, juries and judges,' Hochman said, adding that prosecutors promise victims' families that the facts and the law will play out in a courtroom.
Orange County moves separately at the state Supreme Court
In Orange County, District Attorney Todd Spitzer held a news conference on Thursday morning with relatives of crime victims whose killers are receiving commutations from the governor, and said he will also file papers with the state Supreme Court in opposition to Newsom's order. In separate reporting this week, Spitzer's office released detailed case files on 49 condemned Orange County killers as part of that pushback.
Source: The Time News
Spitzer told KTLA5 at the event that he understands the governor has the right to start the process, but argued that under the law a condemned inmate needs to make the request in the first instance. 'These inmates didn't ask for this,' he said, adding that he hoped the Supreme Court would stay the order, hold hearings, consider the cases on an individual basis and leave the decisions to the next governor, Governor-elect Xavier Becerra.
The earlier decision this challenge follows
Newsom, who is term-limited and will leave office on January 4, announced the commutations last week, on November 5. In an open letter to California residents he wrote that he firmly believes state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values and undermines the foundations of the legal system. The commutations would replace each death sentence with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole; they would not release anyone from prison and would not vacate any conviction.
California has not executed anyone since January 17, 2006. Newsom, a long-time opponent of the death penalty, issued an executive order in 2019 placing a moratorium on executions in the state. According to Hochman's office, about 382 of the 548 cases affected involve people convicted of more than one felony, including 162 condemned inmates from Los Angeles, among them Chester Turner and Michael Gargiulo, both convicted in notorious Los Angeles murder cases.
For people convicted of more than one felony, California's constitution requires a recommendation from the California Supreme Court, with at least four justices concurring, before the governor can commute a sentence. That is why both the governor's plan and the prosecutors' opposition are now headed to the same court, and why opponents are asking the justices to stay the process and review cases individually.
What happens next
The immediate fight is procedural and time-limited. Newsom has asked the state Supreme Court to act in time for him to complete the commutations before his term ends on January 4, while Spitzer says he will file opposition papers with that court and the foundation has announced a legal challenge whose full filing had not been published in the reports available on Thursday evening. No court timetable was announced in those reports. For California's large Punjabi and South Asian communities, from the Central Valley to Los Angeles, the case is a direct test of how far a governor's clemency power reaches when it is used for an entire death row at once, rather than case by case.