For generations, California has understood itself as a place willing to wrestle with hard questions, especially when human dignity is at stake. By commuting all of California’s death sentences to life imprisonment, Gov. Gavin Newsom has shown he is unafraid either to grapple with such questions or to do the right thing to address them.
California never claimed moral perfection. But we have shown a capacity to reflect, to grow and to bring our policies closer to our values. Few issues ask us to do that work as clearly as the death penalty, and few policies have failed California as profoundly as capital punishment.
Michael McBride
I have spent decades walking with people who know violence up close. Families who have lost loved ones. Communities carrying trauma. People navigating incarceration, despair and grief. In those spaces, values are not theoretical. Human dignity, human rights and equal justice are not slogans. They are the difference between harm that compounds and harm that begins to heal.
About 580 people faced execution in California before Newsom’s commutations, the largest Death Row in the nation and one of the largest in the world. Two-thirds of those individuals have been on Death Row for more than 20 years, some for more than 40. These delays are the result of a system unable to meet its own obligations, particularly the provision of counsel for capital appeals. That produces generations of uncertainty that weigh on everyone involved.
Survivors and families have been trapped in a process that stretches grief across decades, reopening wounds rather than closing them. Accountability matters deeply to survivors. But accountability that is endlessly deferred, arbitrarily applied and disconnected from healing does not bring the peace people seek.
It also has become undeniable that the death penalty in California is applied unevenly. The county where a crime occurs, the race of the victim and the financial resources of the defendant are among the strongest predictors of who receives a death sentence. Nearly everyone on Death Row was unable to afford a private defense attorney. When outcomes depend so heavily on geography, race and wealth, we are forced to ask what kind of justice we are administering.
California’s death penalty also has failed on the most basic promise made in its defense: Public safety. Since 1978, California taxpayers have spent roughly $5 billion on this system, resulting in 13 executions. That level of investment has not produced measurable safety benefits. Those same resources could have strengthened survivor services, funded trauma care, supported housing stability and invested in mental health and violence prevention.
As a faith leader, I often say accountability is the basement. It is the minimum. But a system that relies almost entirely on punishment while ignoring root causes cannot claim the moral high ground.
“We are living in the space between recognition and resolution.”
Newsom’s moratorium on executions, the dismantling of the death chamber and the closure of Death Row facilities were meaningful acts of leadership acknowledging these intractable problems. They reflect a recognition that the death penalty, as practiced, no longer aligns with our shared sense of justice. In fact, many Californians already believe the death penalty has ended. In many ways, we are living in the space between recognition and resolution.
By granting universal clemency, commuting all California death sentences based on systemic concerns, Newsom brings these cases into alignment with the moral direction California already has taken. The governor’s decision recognizes that the system’s problems are not isolated or fixable at the margins and that responding to systemic injustice requires a response at scale.
In my faith tradition, we talk about holy imagination. It is the ability to see beyond what always has been done and to build something rooted in dignity, care and the sacred worth of every human life. Newsom has embodied this holy imagination by commuting Death Row to life. And this moment matters beyond California. As the governor himself has said, California is a beacon to the nation in how we govern. That is not just a statement of pride. It is a statement of responsibility.
The death penalty has been part of California’s past, but Newsom has shown that it need not define its future. His decision reflects what we have learned, honors those who have been harmed and opens the door to investment in what actually makes communities safer. History tends to remember moments like these, when leaders chose not only to recognize injustice, but to bring policy into harmony with principle.
I commend Gov. Newsom for his moral clarity and pray his holy imagination serves as a beacon to guide the rest of the nation on a similar path.
Michael McBride, known to all as Pastor Mike, is executive director of LIVE FREE USA and lead pastor at The Way Church in Berkeley.