Newsom Grants Clemency to 548 Death Row Inmates After Meeting with Klaas Family

Gov. Gavin Newsom granted clemency to 548 Californians on death row last week, changing their sentences to life without parole. The state Supreme Court must still weigh in on the majority of these cases. Newsom said the decision stemmed from a 25-minute meeting he had with Annie and Jess Nichol, the sisters of Polly Klaas, inside San Quentin State Prison.

The three met in a death row cell that had recently been renovated. The space, which now features a chess board and green plastic chairs, had once housed Polly’s killer. Newsom said the sisters’ direct request to commute all death sentences resolved his lingering doubts. He described the moment as an "unexpected emancipation" from the emotions he carried after a previous meeting with Polly’s father, Marc Klaas.

Klaas, who opposed the governor’s 2019 moratorium on executions, expressed renewed anger on Monday. He said he feels blindsided and outraged by the unilateral change to the penal code. "I don’t appreciate my daughter being regurgitated any time somebody wants to make a new unilateral change to the California Penal Code," Klaas said. Newsom, however, called their past encounter an "indelible conversation" that respected Klaas's pain while acknowledging his own respect for the family's perspective.

Newsom traces his opposition to capital punishment to his childhood. At age 10, he met Pete Pianezzi, a former bank robber wrongly convicted of a 1937 double homicide. Pianezzi was eventually exonerated, a fact Newsom credits with starting his long-term study of the death penalty. He keeps a copy of the book about Pianezzi’s case, titled "The Bum Rap Kid," in his desk drawer as a reminder of why he took this action.

The commutations align with Newsom’s broader rehabilitation model for San Quentin. The governor highlighted a conversation with an inmate who expressed relief at wearing fresh, warm socks for the first time in nearly 20 years. Newsom argued that investing in rehabilitation serves public safety by preparing incarcerated individuals to rejoin communities as employed, stable neighbors rather than angry residents.

The Nichol sisters, who initially wanted Polly’s killer executed in 1993, said the decision creates a new legacy for Polly. Their case originally prompted California’s three-strikes laws, which they believe led to the over-incarceration of Black and brown people. Jess Nichol said the meeting felt like a "real moment of humanity" and that the result is what they see as a final legacy for their sister.