Press Release
Today Governor Gavin Newsom announced his intention to exercise his constitutional authority to grant clemency to all persons sentenced to death in California, marking a historic shift in the state’s capital punishment system. On behalf of its clients, the Habeas Corpus Resource Center (HCRC) commends the Governor’s extraordinary act.
When Governor Newsom declared a moratorium on executions in 2019, he concluded that the death penalty in California was, in effect, a failure. He cited a host of problems with the state’s application of the death penalty including racism, bias, lack of funding, and the presence of innocent persons on California’s death row. With his announcement today, he affirms that these serious issues with the state’s death penalty system persist to this day. In our capacity as a resource center, the HCRC has collected data demonstrating the intractable nature of these very serious problems. As counsel for over 100 death-sentenced persons since 1999, the HCRC has seen directly how the system’s structural flaws impact not only our clients, but all death-sentenced persons. As but one example, this year marks the fifth year in a row that every person the state of California has sentenced to die has been a person of color.
Nisha K. Shah, HCRC’s Interim Executive Director, stated: “Governor Newsom’s act sends a powerful message about the injustice endemic to California’s death penalty system. To paraphrase the late Justice Brennan, such injustice cannot be neatly confined to the death penalty—it reverberates across society. We applaud today’s news and remain hopeful the Governor will carry out commutations before the end of his term.”
The Habeas Corpus Resource Center was established by the Legislature as a part of the judicial branch of the State of California, effective January 1, 1998, to accept appointments in state and federal habeas capital corpus proceedings and to provide training and support for private attorneys who are appointed to these cases. (1997 Stats., ch. 869.)
For more information, please see the following:
Commutation of California Death Sentences: FAQs and Related Documents