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Governor Newsom: Don’t Hand Off California’s Death Row

Governor Newsom: Don’t Hand Off California’s Death Row

Last updated on: October 22, 2026 at 2:04 pm by Jeff Hood

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Governor Newsom: Don’t Hand Off California’s Death Row 2026-10-22T14:04:04-06:00 Jeff Hood

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Don't Hand Off California's Death Row

Don’t Hand Off California’s Death Row

On November 3, Californians will choose between two men. One of them will inherit the largest death row in the nation. Neither should be trusted with it.

Steve Hilton says he opposes the death penalty himself. He also says he will end the moratorium because voters kept the death penalty twice. A man who will restart the killing he claims to oppose is telling you who he is.

Xavier Becerra says he will keep the moratorium. His record points the other way. In 2017, he told state lawmakers he supported the death penalty and hated only the way it was carried out. That same year, his office sought death for the man who murdered eight people in a Seal Beach salon. Two years after he voted to repeal the death penalty, his office stood before the California Supreme Court and argued that a Black man’s IQ score should be adjusted upward so the state could execute him. When the virus was killing men on death row, his office fought to keep their sentences standing. A pause is a promise that can be taken back.

I know what the row is for. Fourteen times I have stood in an execution chamber. Twelve times the killing came through a needle. Twice it came through a mask. Before the first nitrogen execution, I signed a paper admitting the gas might kill me too. Then I stood beside Kenneth Smith while Alabama sealed the mask over his face and took the air out of his lungs. Last October, I stood with Anthony Boyd through the longest nitrogen execution on record. For more than sixteen minutes, I watched a man gasp for air.

Officials called both deaths humane. I was in the room. The word did not survive what I saw.

Something else died in those rooms. Everyone behind the glass was taught to watch an atrocity and call it justice. We carried that lesson home. Restraint is the thread that holds a nation together. These new ways of killing cut it.

The drugs for lethal injection are drying up. Instead of asking what the empty shelves say about the death penalty, states went looking for something else to kill with. Each time a method collapses under the weight of its own cruelty, officials swear the next one will be cleaner. I have heard that promise in state after state. It broke on a gurney in front of me.

Look where it leads. On December 3, the Trump administration intends to shoot Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, the same post where he murdered thirteen people. For a while, they wanted cameras in the room. When the lunacy of a broadcast was questioned, the cameras were dropped. The rifles were not. When the needle fails, the state reaches for the gas. When the gas fails, the state reaches for the gun. What comes after the gun? A country that has to ask has already lost something it will not get back.

Governor Newsom, you have done what no California governor before you dared to do. You shut the chamber at San Quentin. You looked at the largest death row in the country and refused to let the state kill on your watch. In fourteen chambers, I never saw anyone with power say no. You said it.

A moratorium is a pause. It ends the day you leave office. The statutes stay. The sentences stay. The next governor can lift it with a signature. One candidate has promised to. The other has a record that cuts against his promise. The chamber at San Quentin is gone, so whoever restarts the killing will have to build a new one and pick a new method. I have watched what happens when states go looking for a new method. It does not have to happen here.

You hold the power of clemency. That power exists for extraordinary times. Look around. Death is the mood of the country. Government has become a machine for killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible or for withholding whatever people need to go on living. This is the hour.

I spend my days with murderers. I know what they did. I know the horror so many of them left behind. Nobody is asking you to pretend their crimes did not happen. I am asking for one thing. Do not answer horror with horror. Do not leave the answer to the next man.

This is bigger than California. The death penalty is where a nation shows what it believes about life. Every execution carried out teaches that some people can be thrown away. Every execution refused teaches the opposite. Imagine the lesson if the largest death row in the nation were cleared before the ballots are counted. Nobody expendable. No new method waiting in the wings, because there is nobody left to use it on. Nothing for Hilton to rescind. Nothing for Becerra to walk back.

You have until January. After that, the row belongs to somebody else.

Don’t Hand Off California’s Death Row.

Catholic

Politics and Religion

About The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Catholic priest (Old Catholic), theologian, and nationally recognized activist based in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A spiritual advisor to death row inmates across the country, Dr. Hood has accompanied more people to their executions than any other advisor in the U.S., including the first-ever nitrogen hypoxia execution in 2024. His work sits at the intersection of justice, radical compassion, and public theology. Dr. Hood holds advanced degrees from Auburn, Emory, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, University of Alabama, Creighton, and Brite Divinity School, among others. He also earned a PhD in metaphysical theology and founded The New Theology School, where he serves as Dean and Professor of Prophetic Theology. Author of over 100 books—including the award-winning The Courage to Be Queer—Dr. Hood’s writings and activism have been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, CNN, and more. A frequent collaborator with men on death row, he sees theology as a shared, liberative act. Dr. Hood has served on the leadership teams of organizations like the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. His activism has earned multiple awards, including recognition from PFLAG and the Next Generation Action Network. On July 7, 2016, Dr. Hood led the Dallas protest against police brutality that ended in tragedy. His actions that night saved lives, and his story is now archived in the Dallas Public Library. A father of five, husband to Emily, and friend to the incarcerated, Dr. Hood rejects institutionalism in favor of a theology rooted in people, presence, and prophetic witness. You can read more about the author here.

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