The death penalty in America is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit; it is about whether our imperfect governments deserve to kill. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s commutation last week of all of California’s 548 death sentences to life imprisonment without parole is a remarkable act of moral leadership.
California’s death penalty has cost taxpayers billions of dollars. It has absorbed enormous judicial and legal resources, even though California’s homicide rate has dropped dramatically without a single execution in 20 years. No one disputes that people on California’s death row have been convicted of horrific crimes. Many law enforcement officials and survivors of victims have understandably expressed anger about these commutations. My grandfather was murdered when I was 16, and I understand the rage and pain that violent crime produces. But we must reject the policy of blood for blood. The men and women who were on California’s death row will still be severely punished without the death penalty.
The United States Supreme Court effectively ended capital punishment in 1972 when it concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty had been applied in an arbitrary and unreliable manner, violating the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
In many states, particularly former Confederate states in the South, the disproportionate execution of Black and poor people was considered so essential that new, discretionary schemes for imposing the death penalty were quickly devised. Within four years, the Supreme Court upheld a new era of capital punishment that spread across the nation.
The modern death penalty has been a complete failure. It is characterized by wrongful convictions, racial bias, unreliable proceedings and arbitrary and unjust sentencing. More than 200 people sentenced to death have been exonerated of the crimes for which they were convicted. For every eight people executed in America, one innocent person has been identified. This astonishing failure ratio would never be tolerated in aviation, food safety or virtually any other area of public policy — but executions persist.
Recent executions have exposed the cruelty of capital punishment in graphic and shocking ways. Botched executions, where condemned people writhe, gasp for air, moan and struggle before death, have become common in multiple states. The recent, torturous execution attempt in Tennessee that left Christa Pike unconscious for days forced many Americans to confront the myth that lethal injection leads to a peaceful death.
All of this dysfunction has taken place at a time when the United States Supreme Court has largely abandoned its oversight role in ensuring that states carry out the death penalty constitutionally. A decade after the death penalty was restored, overwhelming evidence of racial disparities in sentencing was presented to the Supreme Court in McCleskey v. Kemp. In response, the court’s majority surrendered to racial bigotry, declaring that racial disparities in sentencing were “an inevitable part of our criminal justice system.”
These disparities have endured. A lawsuit filed in the California Supreme Court in 2024 presented empirical evidence that Black and Latino defendants are up to 8.7 and 6.2 times as likely to be sentenced to death compared to all other defendants. It is impossible to claim a commitment to racial equality while authorizing executions in the face of such evidence of systemic bias.
Today’s Supreme Court almost always refuses to stop executions, even when there are grave concerns about someone’s guilt, or lower federal judges have issued stays based on serious claims of constitutional violations. Without meaningful Supreme Court review, the burden has shifted to governors. Mr. Newsom’s decision should encourage other elected officials to be more active guardians of justice. The power of commutation exists for precisely such a moment as this.
Protecting the powerless and despised frequently comes with harsh and bitter political backlash. That’s true for any act of principled and moral leadership. During the civil rights era, a handful of federal judges and elected officials in the South confronted the injustice of Jim Crow segregation and distinguished themselves by doing what was right, despite intense opposition. These leaders upheld the values that make for a more just society. Mr. Newsom has reminded us that the death penalty presents a similar reckoning.
Like Mr. Newsom, Governors Laura Kelly in Kansas and Mike DeWine in Ohio have spoken openly about the flaws surrounding capital punishment. As their terms draw to a close, these governors have a chance to use their power and authority to do what the law permits and justice requires and commute death sentences to life imprisonment.
Ms. Pike endured her torturous botched execution attempt under Gov. Bill Lee’s watch. The governor has paused executions in his state but his successor, Marsha Blackburn, has threatened to electrocute Ms. Pike once she is sworn in. Ms. Pike’s attorneys have asked Mr. Lee to commute her death sentence before he leaves office in January. The governor has a short window to demonstrate that his role is not to enable the cruelty of the state, but to act as a backstop against it.
Exercising that authority need not be political suicide. Some will continue to use the death penalty to project a false sense of strength, but the twisted logic of killing people to show that killing is wrong is losing its power. This week, Gallup published a poll showing that support for the death penalty has dropped below 50 percent for the first time in over 50 years. Roy Cooper commuted 15 death sentences before leaving the North Carolina governor’s mansion in 2025. Last week, he became the first Democrat to win a North Carolina seat in the Senate in nearly 20 years. Even Alabama’s conservative Republican governor, Kay Ivey, has been compelled to commute three death sentences in recent years, more than any Alabama governor in decades.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, George Washington wrote to the nation’s newly independent governors, invoking the biblical charge “to do justice and to love mercy.” Throughout our nation’s history, that dictate has been ignored again and again in favor of retribution. By commuting hundreds of death sentences, Mr. Newsom has demonstrated what it means to lead with both of these virtues. It is now up to other leaders to find the moral courage to do the same.
Bryan Stevenson is a public interest lawyer and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama.
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