Sacramento, California - California Governor Gavin Newsom said Thursday he was commuting all death sentences across the state to life imprisonment, in a move that will affect 548 people.
"I have decided to exercise my constitutional clemency authority to commute all California death sentences to life without the possibility of parole," he wrote in a letter addressed "to all Californians."
America's most populous state has not carried out a death sentence for two decades, though courts continue to impose the penalty on those convicted of murder and other serious crimes.
"My decision today comes after nearly three decades of openly opposing state-sanctioned executions as an elected official," said Newsom, who will be leaving the governor's mansion in a few months and is widely expected to make a run for the White House in 2028.
"Today I am acting on my long and deeply held conviction that individually and collectively we are stronger as a society when we reject state-sanctioned killing."
The debate over the death penalty in the US was reignited last month with the botched execution of Christa Pike, who survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital.
Pike's case led UN rights chief Volker Turk to urge Tennessee not to make another execution attempt, saying, "The prolonged suffering – physical and mental – arising from multiple failed execution attempts is abhorrent, and cruel."