SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has formally urged Governor Gavin Newsom to use his executive powers to commute the death sentences of all individuals currently on death row in California.
Adopted on Sept. 16, Resolution 436-25 states that “California has the largest death row in the nation,” with 565 people sentenced to death. The measure calls for a sweeping commutation as a moral and legal step toward ending the state’s capital punishment system.
San Francisco voters have twice supported repealing the death penalty — in 2012 and 2016 — underscoring the city’s opposition to executions and its commitment to criminal justice reform, according to the resolution.
“The death penalty reflects a legacy of racial discrimination; sixty-nine percent of the people under a sentence of death in California are people of color, and one third are Black,” the resolution reports.
It adds that death sentences are more likely to be imposed when the victim is white, while cases involving Black or Latinx victims are more often left unsolved.
The California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparations also endorsed abolishing the death penalty as “a step to addressing the legacy of slavery in California.”
Nearly half of the people on death row were convicted for crimes they committed before the age of 26, and about one in six were under 21, the resolution notes. It cites scientific consensus that the human brain does not reach full maturity until the mid-20s, meaning younger individuals are more susceptible to impulsive behavior and poor decision-making.
While some reforms have been enacted to recognize reduced culpability among youthful offenders, those serving life without parole remain excluded from these policies.
The resolution further reports that more than one-third of those on death row have serious mental illnesses or intellectual disabilities. A National Academy of Sciences study estimates that at least four percent of people sentenced to death nationwide are innocent. California has already exonerated eight men from death row — all of them people of color — due to wrongful convictions.
Since 1977, the death penalty system has cost California taxpayers $5 billion, the resolution states, while funding for victims’ services has been slashed because of federal cuts to the Victims of Crime Act.
The state’s inability to provide sufficient attorneys for capital appeals has also caused extreme delays. Two-thirds of those sentenced to death have been waiting more than 20 years, and dozens have been on death row for more than 40 years.
“The California Democratic Party Platform supports the full repeal of the death penalty and the Party has twice endorsed initiatives to repeal the death penalty,” the resolution adds.
Under the California Constitution, Newsom “has the power to commute death sentences, with the review and concurrence of a majority of the California Supreme Court justices in certain cases.”
The resolution also draws a cultural connection to “Dead Man Walking,” an opera presented by the San Francisco Opera from Sept. 14 to 28, which tells the story of Sister Helen Prejean’s spiritual journey accompanying a man on death row. The opera helped inspire her decades-long campaign to abolish capital punishment in the United States.
Resolution 436-25 concludes by urging Newsom to “act now to commute all death sentences.” It directs the Clerk of the Board to transmit a copy of the resolution to the governor’s office.
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