by Jeff Rosen, opinion contributor - 11/11/26
The end of the death penalty in California is a fresh start for justice
California has not executed anyone in 20 years. With his decision to commute the sentences of the 548 people on death row, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has taken a historic step toward ending the death penalty in our state. Just as important, he has given California an opportunity to build something better in its place.
As the elected district attorney for Santa Clara County, I have not always been opposed to capital punishment. In fact, I sought death sentences in multiple cases. But over the years, I have grown convinced that our death penalty system simply cannot guarantee fairness to all.
In particular, visiting the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama opened my eyes to the inextricable link between racial terror lynchings and modern-day executions. As I stood at the memorial honoring thousands who were killed in lynchings — and contemplated the law enforcement officials who condoned and even participated in these killings — I asked myself whether there is any such thing as a moral execution.
In 2020, I stopped seeking capital punishment altogether. In 2024, I asked the courts to resentence 12 men my county had sent to death row. I had no reason to doubt their guilt, but every exonerated person was once someone a prosecutor was sure about. Only hubris would deny that it could happen in my office, too.
We have seen it happen too many times. Nationally, more than 200 people sentenced to death have been exonerated since 1973. Eight of them were in California, and all eight were men of color. It is why, in 2002, Santa Clara County became the first in the country to establish a Conviction Integrity Unit to ensure we could remedy mistakes made in the past.
Over my years as a prosecutor, I’ve also come to recognize that the death penalty’s failures reach the families of murder victims, who deserve far more from our justice system.
Never will I minimize the pain of losing someone to murder. Every murder destroys an entire universe of possibilities, for the person killed and for everyone who loved them. I have also learned that survivors are not a monolith. Some want the ultimate punishment. Many want something else: answers, safety, acknowledgment and the chance to stop reliving the worst day of their lives in a courtroom.
For those families, California’s death penalty has been a promise it could never keep. A death sentence here does not bring finality. It brings decades of appeals, new hearings and fresh headlines, each one reopening the wound. In Santa Clara County, two men sentenced to death in 1997 still did not have their direct appeals fully briefed more than 20 years later. Several others were still waiting for the state to assign them a lawyer. That is not justice delayed. It is justice suspended indefinitely, with victims’ families left waiting in the hallway.
The numbers tell the same story. California has spent more than $6 billion on capital punishment since 1978 and carried out 13 executions. Of the California death sentences that have completed judicial review, more than eight in 10 have been reversed. If any other unit in a prosecutor’s office had that failure rate, we would slam on the brakes and demand change.
And the burden has never fallen evenly. Black Californians are about 6 percent of the state’s population but more than one-third of its death row. And defendants of any race are up to 8.8 times more likely to be sentenced to death when at least one victim is white. Some may decide that a crime is horrific enough that these inequities don’t matter, but I cannot.
Gov. Newsom’s commutations recognize these failures of the death penalty, but they do not erase a single conviction or open a single prison door. What they remove is one of the gravest fears any prosecutor carries: that the state might execute an innocent person. Ending death sentences is more than a recognition of what has gone wrong. It is an opportunity to build something better. Freed from endless capital litigation, California can put its resources where they actually make communities safer and help survivors heal.
I have seen it happen. After I stopped seeking capital punishment, my office significantly narrowed the scope of post-conviction litigation, freeing up time, money and staff that allowed us to provide swifter, more tangible justice to victims’ families.
Statewide, the same shift opens the door to real investment: violence prevention and mental health care for at-risk youth, rehabilitation programs that make prisons safer, better law enforcement training and courts no longer clogged by decades-old cases. Most of all, it lets us invest in the resources crime victims and survivors need.
A prosecutor’s duty is not just to win cases, but to seek justice. That includes recognizing when the system itself is causing harm. Newsom saw that clearly and chose what is right over what is politically easy, showing that public safety, real accountability and respect for human dignity can go together.
Equal Justice Initiative founder and executive director Bryan Stevenson has long asked whether we deserve to kill. California has answered. Now comes the work of building a justice system that earns the trust of every survivor and community it serves.
Jeff Rosen has served since 2011 as the Santa Clara County district attorney.