KABUL (Pajhwok): California Governor Gavin Newsom has announced plans to commute the death sentences of 548 inmates to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, in what has been described as the largest mass commutation in US history.
According to Al Jazeera, Newsom announced on Thursday (5 November) that the death sentences of all 548 inmates on California’s death row would be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
The decision comes despite the fact that no inmate has been executed in California in the past 20 years, the report said.
In an open letter, Newsom said: “I am taking this action because I firmly believe that the state-sanctioned killing of human beings is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system and diminishes the dignity of us all.”
The report said public support for the death penalty in the United States had declined since the 1990s, although the punishment continued to enjoy majority support.
According to a Pew Research Centre poll published in August, 66 per cent of Americans support the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while around 73 per cent acknowledge that innocent people could also be executed.
Al Jazeera reported that 23 US states had completely abolished the death penalty, while several others had effectively halted executions despite retaining capital punishment in their laws.
The Death Penalty Information Centre (DPIC) said California had spent around $6 billion on death penalty cases since 1978, while only 13 people had been executed in the state during that period.
The centre added that at least 203 people in the United States who had been wrongly sentenced to death had been exonerated following reviews of their cases since 1973.
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, described Newsom’s decision as a landmark in the history of capital punishment in the United States, saying no governor in the country had previously commuted death sentences on such a scale.
However, the centre said that under California law, around two-thirds of the commutations would require review by the state Supreme Court before they could be finalised.
The report added that once the decision takes effect, the number of death row inmates across the United States would fall by nearly 30 per cent.
The move comes as US President Donald Trump has supported expanding the use of the death penalty for serious crimes at the federal level.
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