Group readies challenge to Newsom’s death row commutations

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A very happy Friday.

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a conservative-leaning legal group headed by former Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, is gearing up to challenge Gov. Gavin Newsom’s death row commutations. 

Speaking at a rally outside the Capitol on Thursday afternoon, Schubert said the group is preparing to challenge the governor’s executive order to commute the death sentences of all 548 of the state’s condemned inmates to life without parole.

The group plans to file its opposition with the state Supreme Court, which must sign off on Newsom’s order. The challenge could be filed as early as Friday, said the foundation’s legal director, Kent Scheidegger.

Shubert said the challenge will address two main complaints: the governor allegedly broke the law by not informing district attorneys who were involved in securing the convictions, and that he overstepped executive authority by issuing a blanket commutation and not individually reviewing each case. 

The challenge is expected to involve some victims’ family members, law enforcement organizations and district attorneys who oppose the commutations. 

“We are asking the court to uphold the law, respect the sanctity of jury verdicts and protect the rights of victims,” Schubert said.

Sandy Friend, decried Newsom’s decision, recounting the horrific murder of her 8-year-old son, Michael Lyons, by a man whose death penalty sentence is now life in prison.

“I will not stop fighting for Michael and other victims, and I will never stop raising Michael’s name up,” she said. “I want Governor Newsom to look at his face. I want him to know — he has children, too — could he really, really look at what happened to Michael and live with his decision every day?”

Not all the loved ones of people killed by condemned inmates oppose the decision. The sisters of Polly Klaas have been outspoken in their opposition to the death penalty, and Newsom said their perspective was key to his decision-making. Newsom’s order also drew celebration from prison reform activists who have spent years lobbying his office for broad clemency action. 

In an open letter to Californians announcing the decision, Newsom said he agonized over it for years.

“I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us,” Newsom wrote. 

He also acknowledged that the people whose sentences he commuted committed horrific crimes, and that he hoped the commutations would minimize their stature in the public consciousness.

“This decision is among the most difficult of my career, not because I doubt its necessity for our state but because I know its announcement may surface excruciating memories for victims’ families,” he wrote.”

Families and friends of more than a dozen Californians whose murderers were on death row also shared stories of their own loved ones’ cases at the event. Many expressed a sense of betrayal or anger that they were not informed of the commutations in advance, saying they learned of the executive order through news reports. Newsom had said publicly for months that he was weighing the issue.

As the Chronicle reported last week, Schubert said she wrote a letter to Newsom in late October, signed by a coalition of victim advocacy groups and family members, urging him not to issue blanket commutations for “baby killers, murderers of peace officers, school shooters, serial killers, and murderers who raped and tortured their victims before taking their lives.”

Schubert’s letter seemingly undercuts her assertion that the decision was a surprise.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law School, told the Chronicle’s Bob Egelko that the arguments in the legal challenge may run into trouble. 

“There is nothing in the California Constitution that says commutations have to be individual rather than as a group,” he said. 

Governors in other states, including New Mexico, Illinois and Oregon, have all issued group commutations, Chemerinsky said, and President Joe Biden did so as well before leaving office, commuting all but three of the federal death sentences.

As for allegedly defying the will of the voters who approved the death penalty in Prop 66 in 2016, Chemerinsky said the state Constitution gives the right to pardon to the governor.

He also said the state Supreme Court had issued an official guidance on the subject in 2018 saying that the court would give “great deference” to the governor when he chooses to issue commutations.

California has not executed anyone since 2006.

A few members of the Senate Health Committee met on Thursday to discuss medical exemptions for immunizations, led by Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, D-La Mesa, a physician.  

The informal hearing was created to address what Weber Pierson called concerning information presented during a bill hearing for SB1377 earlier that year.