California governor says commuting all death sentences in state

If you think about it, California has the biggest death row in the Western Hemisphere, 548 men and women who've been on death row for many, many years, sometimes more than 15, 20 years for some of them, who have been waiting for trials, for appeals, and for some of them for their execution, even though it is important to remember that California does not execute people on a regular basis. The last time the Golden State did execute a prisoner was in 2006. This extraordinary move by Gavin Newsom sort of fits with his views on the idea. He had issued a moratorium on executions back in 2019, and he now has commuted all of those death sentences into life without possibility of parole. He explains his decision in a statement and says, quote, state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values. undermines the foundation of our legal system and diminishes each of us. Now, support for the death penalty has declined in recent years, even more so in the past couple of months after the horrific botched execution of Krista Pike in Tennessee. And so... Democrats, however, have for a long time been afraid to come out on this topic because they were afraid to be painted by Republicans as soft on crime. Again, Gavin Newsom now at the end of his governorship and eyeing a potential 2028 presidential run has now made that decision. And a reminder also that death row is a very economic decision as well. In the state of California, it is a very expensive decision system to uphold. It involves multi-phase trial and guaranteed state-funded appellate teams, which cost the state $200 million. I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview of what's going on here. I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview of what's going on here. I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview of what's going on here.