Newsom called it the largest mass commutation of death row inmates in American history and described the state's row as the largest in the Western Hemisphere. Accounts differ on how much of it takes effect immediately. Some descriptions say he is already granting clemency, while others say he has announced his intention to commute. Under California law, commutations for people with more than one felony conviction require California Supreme Court approval. Estimates of the share Newsom can grant on his own range from about 40 percent to roughly half, and the remainder is pending before the court.

In the letter, Newsom called the death penalty system a "failure" that cannot be applied fairly. He said it has led to the conviction of innocent people and falls disproportionately on people of color, the mentally ill and the poor. The state, he wrote, cannot execute people in an "imperfect legal system" and still claim to be true to justice and human decency. He argued that the constitution gives governors clemency power for moments when the law as applied cannot be squared with justice, and called the decision a "righteous action."

Newsom acknowledged the cost. He wrote that the decision will cause pain, and that he alone bears responsibility for it. He also acknowledged that 53 percent of Californians voted against abolishing the death penalty in 2016, after voters rejected a repeal measure in 2012 as well. He said he wants victims honored and the offenders to "die in obscurity," keeping the memory of those killed apart from the fate of those who killed them.

Those affected include some of the state's most notorious inmates. Marcus Wesson was convicted in 2004 of killing nine of his children. Richard Allen Davis kidnapped and murdered a 12-year-old girl in 1993. Isauro Aguirre tortured and killed his eight-year-old son in 2013. Victims' families criticized the decision, as did former District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, who threatened to sue to block it.

The action changes sentences and leaves the death penalty itself on the books, since repeal is a power of the legislature. California has not carried out an execution since January 17, 2006, when Clarence Ray Allen, 76, was put to death by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison. A federal district court later found that the execution process posed an unnecessary risk of extreme pain amounting to cruel and unusual punishment. Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions by executive order in 2019, and Governor-elect Xavier Becerra, who succeeds him, has said he will extend it. California is one of four states with a pause on capital punishment, along with Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oregon. Twenty-seven states have the death penalty in effect.

If the California Supreme Court approves the remaining grants, the commutations would cut the nation's death-row population by about 27 percent. Twenty-three states have abolished capital punishment through their legislatures, most recently Delaware in 2024. Support for the death penalty has fallen from about 80 percent in the 1990s to between 52 and 66 percent, and juries handed down fewer than 30 death sentences in 2025, compared with 325 in 1986. Even so, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Alabama and Missouri accounted for roughly 68 percent of the country's executions last year. Florida has dropped the requirement for unanimous jury verdicts in death sentences and allows capital punishment for non-homicide offenses such as child sexual assault. The Trump administration has encouraged states to pursue death sentences. It also sought to livestream the firing squad execution of federal prisoner Nidal Hasan, a plan halted after public disapproval that followed botched executions in Tennessee earlier this year.

Only 17 countries carried out executions last year, according to Amnesty International, and at least 113 have abolished the death penalty for all crimes.