Accusing California Gov. Gavin Newsom of ignoring victims’ families and overturning sentences handed down by juries, the San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA) denounced his plan to commute the death sentences of all 548 prisoners on death row.
The union’s president, Louis Wong, said the union was particularly outraged that the commutations would cover people convicted of murdering children and police officers, committing mass murder and carrying out hate crimes.
“Behind every one of these cases are victims whose lives were stolen and families whose suffering never ends,” he added in a statement issued Friday. “Those families deserve justice and a governor who respects the gravity of their loss.”
The Oakland Police Officers Association and the California Police Chiefs Association also slammed the plan, calling it a betrayal of crime victims and their families.
Newsom announced Thursday that he would use his clemency powers to commute all 548 death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The move would effectively empty the nation’s largest death row, but would abolish the death penalty in California or prevent prosecutors from seeking it in future cases.
The plan is not yet final. Newsom can commute some sentences himself, but the California Supreme Court must approve 382 cases because the prisoners were convicted of multiple felonies. He’s asked the court to act before the end of the year, ahead of his departure from office in January.
Wong said California voters repeatedly upheld the death penalty and that juries had imposed sentences after hearing evidence of serious crimes. Although the prisoners would remain behind bars for life, the union argued that changing their sentences would diminish the punishment for some of the state’s worst crimes. He also said the union stood with victims’ families, including relatives of murdered police officers, who had every right to feel betrayed by the governor’s decision.
Oakland Police Officers Association President Cesar Leyva issued a similar statement, accusing Newsom of putting convicted killers ahead of the people whose lives they had destroyed.
“The governor owes victims’ families the same concern and compassion he is extending to those responsible for their pain,” Leyva said. He invited Newsom to meet with victims of violent crime at the union’s headquarters.
California Police Chiefs Association President Chief Sean Thuilliez focused on Newsom’s request that the state Supreme Court approve hundreds of commutations. He said the court should review the cases independently rather than rush to meet the governor’s deadline.
“Hundreds of murder victims and their families deserve more than a rushed judicial process designed to meet one politician’s deadline,” Thuilliez said.
California’s long fight over the death penalty
Newsom has consistently opposed capital punishment. His latest move goes further than his 2019 moratorium, which stopped executions but left existing death sentences in place. He also suspended the state’s lethal-injection program and ordered the dismantling of the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison. The state has not executed anyone since 2006, but the death penalty remains legal.
Voters have repeatedly rejected efforts to abolish executions. In 2016, they rejected Proposition 62, which would have replaced the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole, by a vote of 53 percent to 47 percent. They also approved Proposition 66, which sought to speed up executions.
In defense of the new policy, Newsom cited racial disparities, wrongful convictions, lengthy appeals, and the high cost of maintaining the death penalty system. He argued that California’s justice system is too flawed to justify executions.
Death penalty opponents welcomed the plan. The American Civil Liberties Union supported the move, having long argued that capital punishment is unfairly applied and risks executing innocent people.
A political calculation?
The announcement comes as Newsom approaches the end of his second term as governor and has been widely viewed as a potential candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. He’s spent much of the past year raising his national profile and positioning himself as one of President Donald Trump’s most outspoken Democratic critics.
His opposition to the death penalty could appeal to liberal voters who favor criminal justice reform. But it’s also a political liability as national support for capital punishment remains substantial.
Newsom has yet to announce a presidential campaign. Still, the timing of the decision is likely to invite questions about its political implications.
For the police groups opposing the plan, the issue is straightforward.
“People who have murdered, robbed and terrorized others must be held accountable,” Leyva said.
The California Supreme Court now has the final say on hundreds of the proposed commutations.
