The following opinion, “A lenten plea to Newsom: Commute California’s death sentences” is written by Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy and appears on the website of the National Catholic Reporter. Overwhelming research and data indicates the death penalty in California is disproportionately applied to people of color, those with mental illness, and people who cannot afford private legal representation. With his term coming to an end with the upcoming 2026 state elections, now is the time for Governor Newsom to commute all of the 550+ people who remain on California’s death row.

Early on during his term as California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on the death penalty, halted executions, took down the execution chamber, and dismissed the state’s execution protocol. He did this, explaining, “I have been openly opposed to the death penalty my whole life, and the people elected me knowing that.”

Since those early reforms, Newsom has been noticeably silent on the death penalty, has shown no inclination to wield his considerable influence on the issue, and has ignored increasing calls for him to use his authority to commute the death sentences of the 580 people still imprisoned.

With his term coming to an end with the upcoming 2026 state elections, now is the time for Governor Newsom to commute all of the 550+ people who remain on California’s death row.

Excerpts from the opinion appear below.

For centuries, Catholics have prayed the Stations of the Cross throughout Lent. 

This solemn Christian season and particular prayer practice prepare our hearts and mind to journey with Christ through the desert and from his death to his Resurrection. 

But as we venerate the cross and walk the Via Crucis, do we pause to notice that the death we commemorate is a state-sanctioned death, not unlike the executions that are still carried out across the United States?

In this Lenten spirit, I urge California Gov. Gavin Newsom to commute the sentences of the more than 500 men and women sentenced to death in California, changing their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Doing so would complete Newsom’s important efforts to dismantle the system of capital punishment in the state. Most importantly, such a courageous act would definitively save the lives of hundreds of individuals.

Every step of Christ’s Passion invites us, here and now, to reckon with the inequities and injustices built into our modern system of capital punishment. In California, which has held the largest death row in the country for decades, many of the men and women sentenced to die do not even have lawyers assigned to advocate for them. An inordinate number of those people on death row have intellectual disabilities, serious mental illness, or find themselves victims of a racially biased system.

It is true that Newsom holds some public policy positions that are at odds with church teaching. However, on the issue of the death penalty, his stance falls consistently in line with clear Catholic teaching. In fact, in 2018 Pope Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church, asserting “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” 

Newsom has made strides in advancing this kind of restoration regarding the death penalty in the state of California. But so long as these more than 500 death sentences exist, lives remain at risk and in the hands of a future administration. 

Some may think California will never return to executions. We once thought that was true of the federal government, but we were proved wrong. While the California death chamber was dismantled, San Quentin continues to be legally designated as the site for executions. Its execution equipment may be considered a vestige of the past, but, in fact, it sits in the basement, waiting for the day it may be used. As long as people are sentenced to death in California, they remain at risk of execution because of changing political winds. 

You can read the full opinion piece “A lenten plea to Newsom: Commute California’s death sentences” at the website for the National Catholic Reporter, a nonprofit, lay-led and independent publication. NCR readers look to NCR to investigate and report on the whole story, without fear or favor, even when it involves telling the truth to and about power.

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy serves as the executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, the national Catholic organization working to end the death penalty and promote restorative justice. She has more than 25 years of experience working in national faith-based policy advocacy organizations including Bread for the World and Witness for Peace.