Hundreds Rally to Urge Commutation of California’s Death Row

On June 26, 2025, more than 200 Californians and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions gath­ered at the state Capitol to urge California Governor Gavin Newsom to com­mute all death sen­tences. Speakers at the gath­er­ing called California’s death penal­ty statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and not­ed per­sis­tent evi­dence of racial bias, his­toric ties to lynch­ing, inef­fec­tive pro­tec­tion of inno­cent lives, and high costs. California, home to the nation’s largest death row, is cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing an ener­gized dis­cus­sion around alle­ga­tions of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and struc­tur­al inequities in cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions, includ­ing a mass clemen­cy cam­paign, indi­vid­u­al­ized relief under the state’s Racial Justice Act, and an equal pro­tec­tion-based state con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge. Many of these chal­lenges are sup­port­ed by data and analy­sis recent­ly cat­a­logued by a group of researchers led by Catherine Grasso. 

Lisa Holder, President of the Equal Justice Society and a for­mer mem­ber of the California Reparations Task Force, attend­ed the June 26^th event and ​“traced the lin­eage of the death penal­ty from slav­ery and lynch­ing to the mod­ern crim­i­nal legal sys­tem.” She con­demned the exclu­sion of Black jurors, lawyers, and wit­ness­es ​“from tes­ti­fy­ing against white defen­dants” in the past and assert­ed there is no way to admin­is­ter the death penal­ty ​“bias-free.” 

Dorothy Ehrlich, for­mer deputy exec­u­tive direc­tor of the American Civil Liberties Union, drew atten­tion to prob­lems includ­ing race, inno­cence, and cost. She not­ed “[s]ince California rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1977, eight Californians have been exon­er­at­ed and released from death row… [a]ll were men of col­or.” Regarding the high cost of the main­tain­ing the death penal­ty, Ms. Ehrlich said, ​“California has spent $5 bil­lion on the death penal­ty since 1977.” 

Many of the argu­ments made by advo­cates at the ral­ly find sup­port in empir­i­cal research doc­u­ment­ing equi­table dis­par­i­ties that arise in crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings. These dis­par­i­ties can be espe­cial­ly pro­nounced in the con­text of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, where race con­tin­ues to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in deter­min­ing who is sen­tenced to death. A recent review of the legal and social sci­ence research by Catherine M. Grosso, Michael Laurence, and Jeffrey Fagan exam­ines over 115 dif­fer­ent stud­ies, schol­ar­ly arti­cles, laws, and prece­dent cas­es, span­ning from 1978 to 2024, to doc­u­ment ​“the mul­ti­ple paths through which insti­tu­tions and process­es produce[d] these racial dis­par­i­ties[.]” The review focus­es on the dis­cre­tion and deci­sions of key play­ers — includ­ing pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, judges, and jurors — which can be influ­enced by both explic­it and implic­it racial bias­es and have been shown to con­tribute to racial­ly dis­parate out­comes. Relevant lit­er­a­ture is cat­a­logued by deci­sion, insti­tu­tion, or actor, tied to key find­ings, lay­ing out a roadmap for read­ers who want to know more about what the authors call the ​“recur­ring and per­va­sive influ­ence of race in the appli­ca­tion of California’s death penalty.” 

Grosso et al. exam­ined stud­ies focused on pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion — includ­ing the deci­sion to charge an indi­vid­ual or offer a plea deal — to doc­u­ment racial dis­par­i­ties in charg­ing and sen­tenc­ing. They note, ​“California’s death penal­ty scheme [] from its incep­tion infus­es vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed dis­cre­tion in who may be charged with a cap­i­tal­ly eli­gi­ble crime and pro­ceeds through a process in which con­scious and implic­it bias­es influ­ences who is sen­tenced to death.” 

Both the process of jury selec­tion and then the actions of indi­vid­ual jurors present oppor­tu­ni­ties to influ­ence whether a defen­dant is sen­tenced to death. Citing to stud­ies, the authors note that “[b]oth jury selec­tion and jury deci­sion mak­ing may con­tribute to the racial dis­par­i­ties observed in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty in California” includ­ing by under­min­ing diver­si­ty through the exclu­sion of Black jurors. 

Judges also came under scruti­ny. Noting that “[u]ntil 2002, California judges remained over­whelm­ing­ly white and male” the authors cite to stud­ies that sug­gest ​“the com­po­si­tion of the judi­cia­ry as a whole … great­ly informs the over­all kinds of deci­sions that judges will yield.” The authors also draw atten­tion to a par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pre­hen­sive study that inves­ti­gat­ed how age, sex, race, polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, and the num­ber of years on the bench impacts judi­cial behav­ior, not­ing that “[w]hen these expec­ta­tions cor­re­late with race, cues from expec­ta­tions can con­tribute to observed racial dis­par­i­ties in death sentencing.”