A government that can wrongfully convict a person should not have the power to execute that person.
That principle should be uncontroversial. Yet for decades, we have maintained a death penalty system that asks us to accept the possibility of an irreversible mistake.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to commute California’s death sentences is a courageous rejection of that bargain. It deserves our support.
On Nov. 5, Newsom announced his decision to change all 548 existing California death sentences to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole—the largest mass clemency in United States history.
Most of the commutations still require a recommendation from the California Supreme Court, which Newsom has asked to act before the end of the year. His decision establishes a clear moral position: California can hold people accountable for terrible crimes without executing them.
As a public defender for more than 20 years, and now Santa Cruz County’s Public Defender, I believe our commitment to justice requires us to confront the limits of the system we administer. Courts depend on human beings. Witnesses can be mistaken.
Evidence can be misunderstood. Lawyers can fail. People entrusted with extraordinary power can misuse it.
When the punishment is death, those failures can become permanent.
Since 1973, more than 200 people in the United States who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death have been exonerated. Each was a person our legal system had declared guilty and eligible for execution. Each case required someone to keep questioning a conclusion that prosecutors, jurors, and courts had already accepted.
The known exonerations may reveal only part of the problem. A 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that at least 4.1 percent of people sentenced to death in the United States between 1973 and 2004 were falsely convicted—roughly one in 25. That is an estimate, not a count of proven cases. But its implication is devastating: the mistakes we discover may represent only a fraction of those we make.
No apology can restore a life after an execution. No compensation can make that person’s family whole. No later court ruling can undo what the government has done.
We should also reject the assumption that executions are necessary to keep us safe. A comprehensive 2012 National Research Council review concluded that the available
research could not establish whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates. Claims that executions provide a proven public safety benefit exceed what that evidence supports.
The moral argument reaches beyond innocence. Even a system capable of perfect accuracy would still require us to confront the cruelty of deliberately killing a person in government custody. That practice is morally repugnant. Our responsibility to act humanely does not disappear when someone commits a terrible crime.
None of this diminishes the suffering of people whose loved ones have been killed. Their losses are profound. Their grief deserves respect, and their needs deserve sustained attention: counseling, financial support, reliable information, and meaningful opportunities to be heard. We should never presume that every grieving family wants the same thing or make execution the measure of whether we take their suffering seriously.
Political courage means accepting responsibility for a difficult decision and explaining why it is right. Newsom has done that. He has recognized that the power to punish must have limits, and that the possibility of error carries a special obligation when a human life is at stake.
His decision should also deepen our commitment to finding and correcting wrongful convictions. Replacing a death sentence with a prison sentence does not remedy the injustice of convicting an innocent person. That work must continue.
California should build a justice system worthy of public trust: one that protects communities, supports people harmed by violence, provides meaningful representation, and remains willing to acknowledge its mistakes.
Governor Newsom has taken a courageous step toward that future. We should meet it with the same moral clarity. Our government should not kill people in our name.
Heather Rogers is the Public Defender of Santa Cruz County and a career public defender with more than 20 years of experience. She leads an interdisciplinary office committed to protecting constitutional rights and serving people with dignity.
