Newsom Appoints Legislator Who Co-Authored Constitutional Amendment Against Death Penalty to be California’s Attorney General

California Governor Gavin Newsom has appoint­ed Rob Bonta (pic­tured), a state leg­is­la­tor who co-authored a pro­posed state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to ban cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, as California’s attor­ney gen­er­al. Bonta fills the vacan­cy cre­at­ed by President Joe Biden’s appoint­ment of for­mer state attor­ney gen­er­al Xavier Becerra as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In his March 24, 2021 announce­ment of the appoint­ment, Newsom said Bonta ​“rep­re­sents what makes California great — our desire to take on right­eous fights and reverse sys­tem­at­ic injus­tices.” Bonta, a five-term mem­ber of the California State Assembly rep­re­sent­ing Oakland, Alameda, and San Leandro, is the first Filipino American to serve as California Attorney General. In 2012, he became the first Filipino American ever elect­ed to the California legislature.

Newsom, who in March 2019 imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and ordered the dis­man­tling of the state’s exe­cu­tion cham­ber, was con­sid­ered like­ly to appoint an oppo­nent of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as attor­ney gen­er­al. In February, Cristine Soto DeBerry, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the pro­gres­sive pros­e­cu­tors’ group, the Prosecutors Alliance of California, expressed the hope that Newsom would select an attor­ney gen­er­al who would ​“seek[ ] to move us toward abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty.” She called Bonta ​“a leader on crim­i­nal jus­tice reform” and said ​“we are thrilled that he will take that courage, human­i­ty and com­mit­ment to jus­tice with him to the attor­ney general’s office.”

Bonta coau­thored an unsuc­cess­ful bill that would have placed a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment on the state bal­lot to repeal the death penal­ty. He is a strong sup­port­er of Governor Newsom’s mora­to­ri­um dec­la­ra­tion, which he applaud­ed as ​“sound pol­i­cy.” ​“I believe the death penal­ty is wrong for California and I oppose it,” Bonta said at the time. ​“Not only is it inhu­mane and unciv­i­lized, it is broken.” 

Calling cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“fal­li­ble[,] … irre­versible and final,” Bonta warned that it risked exe­cut­ing the inno­cent. He also decried the death penalty’s ​“dis­parate impact based on race” and its fail­ure to deter vio­lent crime. “[I]mplementation of the death penal­ty expends enor­mous amounts of valu­able — and lim­it­ed — pub­lic resources that could be used to pre­vent and solve crime, and sup­port vic­tims of crime,” he said.

Bonta described his appoint­ment as ​“the hon­or of a life­time.” ​“I became a lawyer because I saw the law as the best way to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence for the most peo­ple,” he said. Describing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as ​“fun­da­men­tal­ly bro­ken,” Bonta pledged that “[a]s California’s attor­ney gen­er­al, I will work tire­less­ly every day to ensure that every Californian who has been wronged can find jus­tice and that every per­son is treat­ed fair­ly under the law.”