Not all of the commutations take effect on his signature alone. Reports differ on the exact split. Newsom can act unilaterally for about 40% of the inmates, those with a single conviction, while the cases involving multiple felony convictions require approval from the California Supreme Court. Some accounts put the share needing court review at half or more.

In the letter, Newsom called the death penalty system a "failure" that cannot be fairly applied. He pointed to the conviction of innocent people and to the disproportionate targeting of people of color, the mentally ill and the poor. He wrote that the state cannot execute people in an "imperfect legal system" and remain true to justice and human decency, and that "state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values."

He did not minimize what the condemned did. Newsom acknowledged that they caused "indescribable suffering" to their victims, and said the decision will cause pain and that he alone bears responsibility for it. He said the action is meant to separate the victims' memories from the fate of the offenders, who he said will "die in obscurity." He also noted that 53% of Californians voted against abolishing the death penalty in 2016, and argued that the state constitution gives governors clemency power for moments when the law as applied cannot be squared with justice.

Those commuted include Marcus Wesson, convicted of killing nine of his children in 2004; Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and murdered a 12-year-old girl in 1993; and Isauro Aguirre, who tortured and killed his eight-year-old son in 2013. Victim families criticized the decision. Anne Marie Schubert, a former district attorney, threatened to sue to block it. Death penalty opponents praised the move.

The clemency action does not repeal the death penalty, which only the legislature can do. California has not carried out an execution since January 2006, when Clarence Ray Allen, 76, was put to death by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison. A federal court later found that the process posed an unnecessary risk of extreme pain, amounting to cruel and unusual punishment. Newsom imposed a formal moratorium on executions in 2019 and began dismantling the San Quentin death row in 2023 by transferring inmates to other prisons.

Newsom, who is widely described as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, leaves office in January 2027. His successor, Governor-elect Xavier Becerra, has said he will extend the moratorium. The commutations echo President Joe Biden's December 2024 commutation of federal death row sentences and follow smaller actions by other Democratic governors in the 2020s. California is one of four states, along with Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oregon, with a pause on capital punishment, while 27 states have the death penalty in effect.