The New York Times has this by Laurel Rosenhall, “Newsom Mulls Sparing Lives of All 563 Prisoners on Death Row in California: Gov. Gavin Newsom ramped up talks after a botched execution in Tennessee.” It says Newsom “is seriously considering whether to spare the lives of all 563 . . . as one of his final acts in office, according to two people familiar with his thinking.”
The article notes, “Under California law, a governor can unilaterally grant clemency to a prisoner with a single conviction, but the State Supreme Court must approve a clemency request for inmates with multiple felony convictions. If Mr. Newsom decided to commute sentences for everyone on death row, more than half of the cases would have to be reviewed by the court.”
During his almost eight years in office, Newsom has not sought clemency for any death row inmates. (See here.) However, he has successfully requested court approval for 22 commutations of life without parole sentences. (See most recently here.)
With less than three months left in Newsom’s gubernatorial tenure, could the court handle ruling on hundreds of death penalty commutation requests? At an even later point in Governor Jerry Brown’s last term, and with considerably more condemned prisoners, then-Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye told Los Angeles Times writer Maura Dolan that asking the court to pass on so many clemency requests in so short a time would be a “heavy lift,” but, Dolan reported, “she did not say it would be impossible.” (See here.)
Even applying the deferential standard of review that the court has adopted (see here and here), ruling on hundreds of commutation requests by the end of the year would indeed be a heavy lift and maybe impossible, but only if the court reviewed commutations for each prisoner individually. Instead, the court could conclude that a blanket commutation based on the Governor’s opposition to the death penalty generally would not be an abuse of his clemency power.
Related:
California Constitution, article V, section 8(a)
Governor [Brown] jams the Supreme Court with [20] late clemency recommendation requests
