President Donald Trump went after California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday over the Democrat’s decision to wipe out every death sentence in the Golden State. He said some of the killers Newsom spared are worse than one of Hollywood’s most notorious villains.
In a pair of posts on Truth Social, the president called the move “a disaster for Justice in America” and said he hoped it would be overturned. He described the inmates as some of the worst cold-blooded murderers who have ever lived.
“Some of the people that Gavin Newscum freed from the Death Penalty, after many years of going through the California ‘Justice’ System, make Hannibal Lecter, of Silence of the Lambs, look like a nice guy!” Trump wrote in a second post.
Trump’s posts came just over a week after Newsom announced he was commuting the sentences of all 548 inmates on California’s death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole. None of the inmates will be released from prison.
Newsom made the announcement in a lengthy public letter roughly two months before he leaves office. He argued that capital punishment is “incompatible with California’s values.”
“By every measure, California’s system for administering the death penalty is a failure,” Newsom wrote. He added that it “has not been and cannot be fairly applied and has resulted in the conviction of innocent people.”
The governor admitted in the letter that many Californians, including the families of murder victims, would disagree with him. He also acknowledged that California voters had chosen to keep the death penalty on the books and that he does not have the power to repeal it outright.
He also noted that some of the commutations, for inmates with multiple prior felony convictions, have to be reviewed by the California Supreme Court before they can take effect.
That admission is likely to fuel critics who say Newsom has spent years overriding the will of his own voters. Californians rejected ballot measures to abolish the death penalty in 2012 and again in 2016. The same year, voters approved a separate measure aimed at speeding up death penalty appeals.
Newsom, however, went in the opposite direction. In March 2019, just weeks after taking office, he signed an executive order putting a moratorium on executions, withdrew the state’s lethal injection rules and shut down the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison.
Trump blasted that decision at the time as well, writing that the governor was “defying voters” and that “friends and families of the always forgotten VICTIMS are not thrilled, and neither am I!”
California has not executed an inmate since 2006, even though the death penalty remains legal under state law.
The president has long been one of the country’s most outspoken supporters of capital punishment, calling for it in cases involving the murder of police officers and drug trafficking.
Newsom has said the death penalty is not a deterrent and has cost California taxpayers billions of dollars since 1978.
