California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s open letter commuting all 548 death-row sentences refers to the convicts as “offenders” and “condemned persons” without using the word “criminal,” while naming neither the beneficiaries nor their victims.

The piece highlights cases such as Alejandro Avila (rape and murder of five-year-old Samantha Runnion) and others including the killers of Polly Klaas, noting Newsom’s earlier 2018 reprieves and 2020 COVID-era unemployment payments to some death-row inmates.

Critics argue the action prioritizes the lives of murderers over victims and contrasts it with Newsom’s support for expanded abortion access and prior juvenile-justice changes under Jerry Brown.

In the open letter explaining his commutation of all 548 convicts on California’s death row, Gov. Gavin Newsom describes the convicted murderers as “people with death warrants,” “the people sentenced to death in California,” “condemned persons,” and “offenders.” The term “criminal” never appears.

These “offenders” caused “indescribable suffering to victims, their families, communities and our state as a whole,” said Newsom, who failed to name a single beneficiary of his commutation or a single one of their victims. Here’s a couple........

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