Victims’ families lash out at Gavin Newsom after mass commutation of ‘monsters’ on death row in California
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Oct. 17 in Exeter, N.H.John Tully / GettyShareAdd NBC News to GoogleNov. 12, 2026, 5:36 PM ESTBy David K. LiLoved ones of California murder victims lashed out at Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday, one week after he moved to commute the death sentences of more than 500 condemned inmates.
The executive action, considered to be one of the most consequential moves against capital punishment in recent history, angered crime victims who had already had to endure the agonizing pain of losing a relative.
Faye Jenkins, whose daughter and son-in-law were tortured and murdered in their Riverside County home in 2008, said the California electorate backs capital punishment and Newsom shouldn’t have intervened.
“We voted for this,” Jenkins told reporters outside the Orange County District Attorney’s Office in Santa Ana.
“Who gives you that right to make the decision for all of us? You didn’t ask me, you didn’t ask my husband, you didn’t ask other families. Don’t inflict your personal beliefs on all of us.”
Golden State voters were last asked about capital punishment in 2016 and then, by a relatively narrow margin, rejected a death penalty abolition measure.
“People used to say they’re animals. No, I love animals. These were monsters,” Jenkins said of the four Marines who killed her daughter.
“They tortured my daughter and made my (son-in-law) watch while they sexually assaulted her,” Jenkins said. “They stomped him and beat him so badly he even had shoe prints on his back — the impression where they stomped him so hard. Who does that? And these are people that (Newsom) thinks deserve a second chance?”
Steve Herr, the father of Samuel Eliezer “Sam” Herr, recalled the 203 court dates he attended before neighbor Daniel Wozniak was convicted and sentenced to die for the killing of his son and the victim’s friend Juri “Julie” Kibuishi in Orange County in 2010.
“He was sent to San Quentin’s death row to await his execution and I thought that was the end of that horrible nightmare,” Herr said. “That was not to be.”
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Newsom would need the consent of the California Supreme Court on 382 of the 548 condemned inmates to have them all moved off death row and to a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, or LWOP.
However, Orange County DA Todd Spitzer insisted that there are procedural shortcuts around LWOP that could put these dangerous killers back on the street.
“Life without the possibility of parole is absolute nonsense,” Spitzer said. “I have been so attacked through social media over the weekend and I’ve been responding to everybody that I see saying, ‘Todd, you’re fear mongering. You’re lying about the law. You know these people can’t get out of prison.’”
“We practice law every day and we have people who’ve been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole who are getting out of prison,” he said.
While there are mechanisms to gain parole following an LWOP sentence, Loyola Marymount University law professor Stan Goldman said he couldn’t think of an example of such an act off the top of his head.
“As a practical matter, it’s not a real problem,” Goldman said Thursday. “If the past is prelude to future, it is very unlikely someone, or masses of people, will be released despite the fact they’ve been given LWOP after they were released from death row.”
David K. LiSenior Breaking News Reporter
