Sacramento, CA — Past murders in the Calaveras community of West Point are being brought up by GOP leaders following an action by Governor Gavin Newsom.
As one of his final decisions in office, Governor Newsom announced Thursday that he plans to change all of California’s existing death sentences to life imprisonment without parole.
The clemency action would benefit 548 inmates currently on death row. California has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 2006, but the death sentences have remained in place.
Newsom called the decision the “most difficult” of his career.
Newsom stated in a letter, “Faithfulness to our values is measured by how we act when it is most difficult to uphold them. For me, this is one of those instances. By every measure, California’s system for administering the death penalty is a failure. It has not been and cannot be fairly applied and has resulted in the conviction of innocent people. Decades of efforts to repair the system have only compounded its stagnation. Because the death penalty is inherently incompatible with our legal system’s commitment to justice, I have determined that this clemency decision, while difficult in many respects, will ultimately affirm the strength and integrity of our state and its justice system.”
Many of the commutations will also require a recommendation from the California Supreme Court before Newsom can finalize them, so there are additional steps.
California Senate Republican leaders are voicing opposition to the move. The GOP sent out a media statement this morning highlighting eight high-profile offenders who would move off death row. Included is Charles Ng, who tortured, raped, and killed at least 11 people in the Wilseyville area of Calaveras County in the 1980s.
He carried out the crimes with Leonard Lake, who died in 1985.
Senate Republican Leader Roger Niello says, “Public safety and the needs of victims and their families must come first, yet Governor Newsom’s decision sends a very different message. Already in California, life without the possibility of parole has proven to be less than absolute. Sending a mass, sterile notification to all victims in a single notice demonstrates a profound disregard for the deeply personal pain each family has endured.”
Senator Suzette Martinez Valladares adds, “Governor Newsom is a killer of justice.”
The eight offenders highlighted by the GOP are below:
- Randy Kraft – “Scorecard Killer” – murdered 16 people, potentially as many as 45 young men, targeting hitchhikers 18-25, strangling his victims after drugging and sexually assaulting them.
- Charles Ng – Tortured, raped, and murdered at least 11 people in Calaveras County in the 1980s.
- William Suff – “Riverside Prostitute Killer,” “Lake Elsinore Killer” – Convicted of 12 brutal murders in Riverside County and abused his own children.
- John Jacobson Jr. – “Yacht Killer” – lured the Hawkses family onto their boat off the California coast, tied them to the anchor, and threw them overboard before grabbing a beer from the fridge and starting to fish.
- Gerald Parker – “Bedroom Basher” – Raped and murdered five women and killed the unborn baby of a sixth woman. Later charged with another rape of a 14-year-old girl.
- David Carpenter – “The Trailside Killer” – Stalked and shot dead at least 10 people on hiking trails in parks near San Francisco.
- Isauro Aguirre – Tortured for months and murdered 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez.
