California has taken important steps toward ending the death penalty. In 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom placed a moratorium on executions and dismantled the death chamber at San Quentin. Under his leadership, California has also moved toward a more humane vision of justice through the California Model — one rooted in accountability, rehabilitation, and restorative justice.

But the work is not finished.

Hundreds of people in California remain under a sentence of death. As long as those sentences stand, the machinery of capital punishment remains intact — waiting only for a future governor to potentially revive it.

Urge Governor Newsom to take the next decisive step: commute all death sentences within his authority to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and petition the California Supreme Court to approve the commutation of the remaining sentences.

Commuting these sentences would not ignore the suffering of victims or minimize the harm caused by serious crimes. Victims and their families carry burdens that often last a lifetime, and their pain must never be forgotten. True justice requires accountability, compassion for those harmed, and a system that protects society while affirming the dignity of every human person.

The Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. Modern systems of detention can protect the public without resorting to execution. Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole ensures accountability while permanently ending California’s reliance on capital punishment.

California has already begun moving away from the death penalty. Now is the time to make that progress permanent.

Please sign the letter urging Governor Newsom to commute California’s remaining death sentences to life without the possibility of parole.