Newsom weighs commuting all 563 California death sentences in historic move
California Governor Gavin Newsom is weighing an unprecedented step: commuting the sentences of all 563 inmates on the state's death row before he leaves office next January. According to an October 7 report by The New York Times, Newsom has stepped up discussions with his advisers in recent days, and a botched execution in Tennessee — where two doses of a powerful sedative failed to kill death row inmate Christa Pike — has weighed on his thinking. On his podcast, Newsom put the question to civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson: "Do I commute the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere?" He described the choice as one that must pass his own "consciousness test" and "rocking chair test." California has not carried out an execution since 2006; Newsom imposed a moratorium by executive order in 2019, yet more than 200 people have been sentenced to death since then. California's death row is the largest in the Western Hemisphere, and commuting all 563 sentences would cut the national death row population by more than a quarter. For inmates with multiple felony convictions, however, commutations would still require approval from the California Supreme Court. Topo Padilla of Crime Victims United blasted the idea, noting that the 563 capital verdicts were reached unanimously by 6,756 jurors and calling a single-handed reversal an affront to the judicial process and victims' families. Newsom has not yet made a final decision. (Sources: The New York Times, KTVU)
Source: 纽约时报、KTVU
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图片来源：Frank Schulenburg（CC BY-SA 4.0，Wikimedia Commons）/ Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)
