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California’s police chiefs sent a plea to Gov. Gavin Newsom Wednesday to not follow through on sparing 563 inmates from the death penalty — warning that doing so could have disastrous consequences for public safety.
Calling the potential commutation “outrageous,” a group of top cops said the move would give a pass to heinous criminals like Richard Allen Davis, killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, and undermine the work of law enforcement and juries.
“These are the worst of the worst — individuals who committed horrific murders and were sentenced to death by juries after hearing the evidence,” Tustin Police Chief Sean Thuilliez, who heads the California Police Chiefs Association, said in a statement.
Conversations in Newsom’s circles over the potential mass clemency for some of the state’s most notorious inmates ramped up after Tennessee’s botched execution of Christa Pike, which went horribly awry when two doses of the highly potent sedative Pentobarbital failed to kill her, the New York Times reported.
But such an action, police chiefs warned, could also mean more dangerous people out in the streets while overriding decisions made by juries.
There are now more legal avenues for resentencing, sentence review and commutation, the police association noted. New regulations, for instance, could lead some criminals — even those serving life without parole — to be considered for clemency or sentence reductions to the governor or courts.
“The governor is considering taking those sentences away and replacing them with a punishment that offers no guarantee these murderers will spend the rest of their lives in prison. That is outrageous, and it is an insult to the victims and families who have waited decades for justice,” Thuilliez said.
Pressure was growing for the governor to enact a mass death row commutation even before the Pike incident, though the California Supreme Court would have to approve commutations for people with multiple felony convictions.
A mass commutation in California could slash the total number of condemned inmates across the country by more than a quarter.
A terming-out governor overturning multiple death sentences is unfair to victims’ families, law enforcement and juries, the chiefs association contended.
“This is not his decision alone to make. The next Governor, the Legislature, victims’ families, and the people of California deserve to have their voices heard,” said Thuilliez.
A mass commutation could spare the likes of Richard Allen Davis — convicted in 1996 of kidnapping and murdering 12-year-old Polly Klaas — and serial killer Charles Ng, who was convicted of 11 first-degree murders, among other condemned criminals in the Golden State.
Those on death row also include Cary Stayner, an American serial killer who murdered four women near Yosemite National Park in 1999 while working as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge motel. Two of his four victims were ages 15 and 16.
The California Post reached out to Newsom’s office for comment.
California has not carried out an execution since 2006, even though it houses the nation’s largest death row population, partly because Newsom himself introduced the state’s moratorium on executions through an executive order in 2019.
The governor’s office previously told The Post that “Governor Newsom has been clear about his position on the death penalty since his first year in office, when he ordered a moratorium on executions.”
The governor criticized the death penalty as discriminatory and wasteful when he signed the executive order pausing executions.
Newsom, however, has expressed conflicted feelings over a commutation decision.
During a past episode of his podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” he openly asked pro-racial justice attorney Bryan Stevenson: “Do I commute the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere?”
Newsom then later debated against himself: “What do I say to the victims?”