We’ve just seen a transformative moment in America’s death penalty history | Austin Sarat

Gavin Newsom’s decision to empty his state’s death row is a truly remarkable moment in the US’s death penalty history.Not only will it free hundreds of people from the threat of execution, but coming from a politician seemingly looking to run for the presidency, it sends an important signal that America’s attachment to capital punishment is weakening, and opposing the death penalty is no longer a third rail in US politics.When the news broke about Newsom’s clemency, I thought back to the moment in 1988 when the Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis ended whatever hope he had of becoming president by sticking to his opposition to capital punishment after the CNN anchor Bernard Shaw asked: “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”As Politico notes: “Dukakis answered instantly and smoothly. ‘No, I don’t, Bernard … And I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life.’ He had been on the record for years and years on that subject … Dukakis didn’t believe in capital punishment. He had seen all the studies, and he didn’t believe it deterred crime.”“In the press room,” Politico adds, “the murmurs over Shaw’s question now turned to mutters over Dukakis’ answer. ‘He’s through.’ ‘That’s all she wrote.’ ‘Get the hook!’”Even with that lesson looming over him, Newsom’s decision to grant a universal clemency was not hedged or spun in any way. It is the latest and most consequential of a series of things Newsom has done to rid his state of the death penalty.His anti-death penalty record is unparalleled in the modern history of the death penalty.Before looking back at that record, let’s note what Newsom said when he announced his decision.“The people sentenced to death in California caused indescribable suffering to victims, their families, communities, and our state as a whole … many Californians feel that those who commit brutal crimes deserve to die. But as governor, I have concluded that the state cannot morally kill them.”“Faithfulness to our values is measured by how we act when it is most difficult to uphold them. For me, this is one of those instances … Today, I’m acting on my long and deeply held conviction that individually and collectively we are stronger as a society when we reject state-sponsored killing.”That is an incredibly direct embrace of abolitionism, not just because the death penalty system is flawed, but because the death penalty is morally wrong.Newsom noted: “Some have said I should not grant clemency to people who committed the worst of the worst crimes … I have learned, however, from speaking with the victims harmed by these crimes, that each experiences their loss as the worst of the worst. I have concluded that attempting to distinguish among crimes and offenders for clemency would inadvertently create two classes of murder victims, those whose perpetrators deserve the death penalty and the rest.”There are several people who will benefit from Newsom’s decision who certainly qualify as among the worst of the worst. They include the serial killer Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993. As Newsweek explains: “Davis kidnapped Klaas from her bedroom in Petaluma at knifepoint and strangled her to death. Klaas’ disappearance sparked a nationwide search. Davis was arrested two months later and led police to her body, which was found in a shallow grave. The case led to California’s passage of a ‘three strikes’ law in 1994 that set longer sentences for repeat offenders.”Then there is Joseph Naso, “known as the ‘Alphabet Killer,’ who was sentenced to death in 2013 after being convicted of the killings of four women with matching initials between 1977 and 1994”. And Cary Stayner, “‘the Yosemite Park Killer’ [who] was sentenced to death after being convicted of the 1999 murders of four women near Yosemite National Park”.It takes extraordinary and exemplary courage to spare their lives.Contrast Newsom’s willingness to include them in his mass clemency with Joe Biden’s decision not to spare the lives of three of the 40 people who were on federal death row in December 2024. The president seemed to concede that they deserved to be executed.Newsom’s death penalty abolitionism is complete in a way that Biden’s was not. And in that way it is harder and more important.Throughout his service as California governor, Newsom has demonstrated the kind of moral clarity about the death penalty that is all too often missing in our national discourse. He showed it in 2019 when he imposed a moratorium on executions in his state.The American Bar Association praised that decision and explained: “The decision to impose a moratorium on carrying out capital punishment so early in his term was for him personally the culmination of a 40-year journey of thinking through the consequences and morality of the death penalty.”But that was not all. As the ABA observes: “At the same time Governor Newsom announced the moratorium, he also directed San Quentin State Prison to decommission its execution chamber.”The governor knows that Americans are ready to move on and put the death penalty in the rearview mirror. Even after the horrors of Christa Pike’s failed execution and 5 November’s three executions in one day, the readiness to end the death penalty is there.We need leaders to step forward and encourage this country to abolish the death penalty.Newsom gets this, which takes on added importance since the present occupant of the White House does not.His clemency offers both inspiration and a model for governors in other death-penalty states. Those, such as Ohio’s Mike DeWine, who oppose the death penalty should not leave anyone behind on death row when they leave office.Whether or not they follow Newsom’s lead, Stanford Law School’s Michael Romano got it right when he said a Newsom universal clemency would be a “cataclysmic decision for the death penalty”. His actions, as Romano says, is the “most important declaration that has been made in modern American history, that executions are intolerable under any circumstances”.Newsom has changed America for the better. Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author of Life After Death: Surviving Execution