Gavin Newsom’s rambling word-salad excuse for saving heinous child killers from the ultimate punishment

Gavin Newsom offered a rambling justification last week for his decision to commute the death sentences of 548 convicted murderers on California’s Death Row.

The letter is stunning in what it reveals about the sheer arrogance of this individual we apparently elected as king. 

On one hand, the governor claims that the “discretion to seek, impose, and uphold death sentences in individual cases remains, as ever, in the hands of prosecutors, juries, and courts.” 

Great. Thirty years in elected office and we get Captain Obvious stating what everyone knows. 

He follows up with bragging about how he has the power to overturn the will of the people, claiming “that power exists for moments when law as applied cannot be squared with justice. For me, this is that moment.”

King Gavin claims that California’s system for administering the death penalty is a failure. But that rings hollow when he had eight years in office as governor to fix the system and chose not to do anything other than issue a moratorium. The governor neither signed nor proposed new laws on capital punishment.

Worse, by commuting the sentences of 548 Death Row inmates to serve their sentences instead as “life without the possibility of parole” (LWOP), Newsom is paving the way for these inmates to hit the streets as free men one day. 

Just look at how the Legislature has been busy over the last two decades minimizing prison sentences and criminal accountability in every way possible. This year, the governor signed AB 2727 to raise the minimum age for “elder parole” to 65.

But he only did that because, six years to the day before, he signed AB 3234, which lowered the age to 50, leading to the potential release of dangerous offenders.

The de facto moratorium on executions, dating back to 2006, is a simple reflection of the far-left Legislature refusing to fix the system so that it can prevent a resumption of executions. Today the most frequent cause of death on Death Row is old age. 

The people of California have twice affirmed their support of the death penalty in ballot initiatives. Moreover, all of the remaining 548 inmates on Death Row have received the due process to which they are entitled.  

Claims by Newsom that the system is unfair don’t hold up. The criminal justice system itself has no control over who commits capital crimes, or who engages in actions during the commission of murder that qualify as “special circumstances.” The law is the law.

One of the main reasons Death Row grew over the last few decades has been the bottleneck created by a once-tough-on-crime Legislature that greatly expanded the list of actions that constituted “special circumstances.”

King Newsom could have corrected that by preserving the death sentences of mass murderers, serial murderers, child killers and cop killers, and the Death Row population would have been cut in half. 

That simple action would have freed up valuable legal resources to ensure the remaining Death Row population had the ability to exhaust all their appeals in a timely fashion. 

Putting someone to death 30 years after they commit a horrific crime is a miscarriage of justice of its own, prolonging unnecessarily the agony of the families who lost a loved one to a cold-hearted killer.

King Gavin’s hollow words invoking the suffering of victims, their families, and the community do not hold up upon close inspection. His actions during COVID demonstrated that he had zero concern about the welfare of the community, as he imposed restriction after restriction.

While he was dining comfortably at the French Laundry, sending his kids to private schools that remained open while public ones shut down, and partying it up with celebrities sans face masks, he demonstrated that he has little regard for the suffering of his constituents.

Newsom’s unwarranted act of mercy for the merciless is a pathetic attempt to gain the favor of the progressive movement within the Democratic Party as he lustfully eyes a run at the White House. 

It is a calculated move for political gain, devoid of any concern about the impact his decision will have on 548 families whose lives will never be the same.

All hail King Gavin I!

Alex Villanueva is a former LA County sheriff.