(KRON) -- The Monterey County District Attorney blasted Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to commute death sentences for 548 California inmates, including convicted serial killers.
“With the stroke of a pen, Governor Newsom has told hundreds of grieving families that their loss no longer matters. These sentences were not handed down lightly. They were earned through the worst crimes imaginable and imposed by juries of ordinary Californians who sat through weeks of harrowing testimony, weighed the evidence, and carried the weight of that decision. One man erased all of it," District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni said Friday.
Gov. Newsom said Thursday that he’ll change more than 500 death sentences in the state to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The state Supreme Court will have the final say in many of those cases.
Of the 548 inmates, 529 are men and 19 are women, according to the governor's office.
"I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us," Newsom wrote.
DA Pacioni disagreed, saying, "This is not mercy. He will not have to look their families in the eye. He will not have to explain to them why a political calculation outweighed a jury’s verdict. The victims were never given a commutation. And now the voices of the people of California, spoken through their juries, have been silenced by executive decree. I stand with the victims and the survivors who deserve far better than this."
Among the most notorious convicted killers on California’s death row are Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Petaluma, and Randy Kraft, the "Scorecard Killer" who kept a list of his 16 victims.
A condemned inmate is led out of his east block cell in San Quentin State Prison, in San Quentin, Calif. (AP Photo / Eric Risberg, File)
Pacioni listed some of the inmates convicted in Monterey County whose death sentences would be changed to life in prison under Newsom's decision:
Joseph Nissensohn
Nissensohn is a serial killer who preyed on teenaged girls. He was sentenced to death on December 11, 2013, for the 1981 murders of 13-year-old Tammy Lynn Jarschke and 14-year-old Tanja Jones. Three months after the girls' disappearance, their bodies were found in Carmel Valley. Jones' naked body was found hanging from a tree with an electrical cord wrapped around her neck. Jarschke’s body was found with a screwdriver still pierced in her body. Nissensohn was also convicted of the 1989 murder of a 15-year-old girl whose body was found by hikers in El Dorado County, and convicted of murdering another victim in Washington.
Joseph Manibusan
Manibusan "murdered for the thrill of doing so," the Monterey County DA said. He was convicted of murdering victim Priya Mathews on the Monterey Wharf in 1998, and victim Frances Olivo in Seaside, the DA said. He was sentenced to death on January 24, 2001.
Ronald Wayne Moore
Moore murdered his 11-year-old neighbor, Nicole Carnahan, in Salinas in 1998. The girl was slashed in the neck and her body was reportedly stuffed behind her bunkbed. Moore was given a death sentence in 1999.
Pacioni was not the only leader in California's criminal justice system who strongly opposed Newsom's decision.
Louis Wong, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said police officers are "horrified by Governor Newsom’s move to provide blanket commutations for more than 500 death row inmates, including people convicted of murdering children, killing police officers, committing mass murder and carrying out hate-motivated killings."
Wong continued, "Behind every one of these cases are victims whose lives were stolen and families whose suffering never ends."
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Newsom’s action represents the largest mass clemency in American history. If they are all approved, it would reduce the U.S. death row population by nearly 30%, the center said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
