By Yana Singhal
SACRAMENTO, CA – Drop LWOP Coalition, in a statement March 29 applauded California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s use of executive clemency, and granting of “18 commutations and 37 pardons,” allowing people to have a new lease on life by being reviewed by the California Parole Board.
According to Joseph Bell, an advocate with Drop LWOP and Human Rights Watch and a founding member of the National LWOP Leadership Council, “We urge him to accelerate clemency, especially for the thousands of people serving life without parole (or LWOP) who are rapidly aging. Many were sentenced as youth and have spent decades on their rehabilitation, despite being told there was no point.”
Under California law, LWOP – Life With Out Parole – is a sentence “in which a person is sent to prison for the rest of their life with no possibility of demonstrating their change and growth to seek parole.”
Drop LWOP described it as “the death sentence in slow motion,” stating “LWOP effectively banishes people from the world outside prisons and demonizes them as less than human.”
However, according to the Drop LWOP Coalition, Governor Newsom’s modest use of clemency has been met with “a growing momentum across the country to reform life without parole and extreme sentencing and provide avenues for these sentences to be reviewed.”
However, in states such as Louisiana and Massachusetts, U.S. governors “are using their clemency powers significantly more than Newsom,” said the Coalition.
The Coalition said, during his time as California’s chief executive, former Gov. Jerry Brown “issued over 100 commutations to people serving LWOP, went on record stating that one of the advantages of being in government for 50 years is correcting mistakes of the past, referencing tough-on-crime sentencing that fueled mass incarceration.”
The Drop LWOP Coalition also said it recognizes death by incarceration (life without parole) has increasingly “recognized these sentencing schemes as cruel and inhumane.”
“After a delegation of advocates and attorneys from across the U.S. testified in Geneva, Switzerland this past October, the UN affirmed that LWOP amounts to torture and racial discrimination in violation of international human rights laws and called on the U.S. for the first time to consider a moratorium on all life without parole (LWOP) sentences.”
In response to this, Kelly Savage-Rodriguez, a coordinator with Drop LWOP, stated, “We are grateful for Newsom’s decision to commute 18 individuals serving LWOP, giving them a second chance at life.”
Savage-Rodriguez added, “In doing so he’s recognizing the very real capacity for people to grow and change, and how they “hope he continues down this path, which is informed by compassion as well as data. We know when people serving LWOP come home they make our communities safer.”
