October is the Month to Work for Clemency in California

Recent & upcoming executions like Marcellus"Khaliifah" Williams and Robert Robertson illustrate how important the work for clemency is and reminds us that California Governor Gavin Newsom's moratorium on executions is term limited.

Last year, Equal Justice USA worked on the strategy for the CA Clemency campaign and identified October 2024 as an opportunity to start to ramp up outreach for organizational and individual support for the campaign.

Why October?

• In October, the Catholic Church celebrates Respect Life Month.
• October 10, 2024 is World Day Against the death penalty.
• During October, people of Jewish faith will celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. 

To that end, Felony Murder Elimination Project encourages our supporters to do the hard but good work this month of advancing the cause of abolishing the death penalty in California and across the country.

For individuals:

• Access and use the Universal Clemency Resources toolkit for sample tweets/posts, graphics, and sample letters to share your desire to see the death penalty abolished in California and across the country. The toolkit also provides quality resources about faith traditions and the death penalty.
• Sign the CA Clemency petition to state your position supporting universal clemency for every person on California's death row!

For organizations:

• Have your organization post the petition once per week on social channels. 
• If you have an email list in California, send an email to California supporters about the campaign.
• Are you part of a California-based or national coalition that would be open to you sharing? Please do. 
• Are you part of a faith group, congregation, synagogue, worship space where you could share about the campaign? Again, please do.

Governor Newsom knows California’s death penalty process is inhumane, dysfunctional, racially biased, and error-prone. He should use his executive authority to confront the systemic failures of this outdated policy and take steps to grant clemency in all death-sentenced cases. This isn’t about individual cases, it is about a system that is unjust, ineffective, and unfixable. Universal clemency means commuting every death sentence, rather than an individualized grant of clemency based on individual factors.

We continue to work to press policy makers, and in this case, Governor Newsom, to use his executive authority to grant clemency in ALL death penalty cases.