His daughter was abducted during a sleepover and killed. He is among families grappling with Newsom’s death row commutation

By Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN

(CNN) — On a summer day in 1996, Marc Klaas sat in a San Jose courtroom and clutched the hands of his family as a clerk read aloud the guilty verdict that would eventually place his 12-year-old daughter Polly’s killer on death row. When the man who had fatally strangled Polly Klaas after kidnapping her from a sleepover, Richard Allen Davis, learned of his fate, he turned to the courtroom with his shirt hanging out of his belt, and made an obscene gesture to the room.

When Davis was sentenced to death, Klaas thought to himself, “This is what he deserves.”

He felt the judge and jury had seen the man he knew Davis to be, had recognized the pain he had inflicted on Klaas’ family, and punished him accordingly.

So when he heard three decades later that California Gov. Gavin Newsom would be commuting Davis’ death sentence – along with hundreds of others – the announcement felt like “a shiv in my back,” Klaas said.

Klaas said he was in court Thursday supporting the family of another child kidnapping victim when he heard news of Newsom’s decision, which would commute the sentences of all 548 state death row prisoners to sentences of life without parole.

“My decision today comes after nearly three decades of openly opposing state-sanctioned executions as an elected official,” Newsom said in an open letter explaining the move, which comes just two months before he is set to leave office. The three-page letter acknowledged the pain the decision will inevitably inflict on many victims and their families but said he believes killing is “incompatible with California’s values.”

The announcement has stirred up complicated emotions among victims and their families, some of whom – like Klaas – are furious over what they see as a circumvention of justice. Pro-clemency groups and some family members, including other relatives of Polly, and coalitions have celebrated the decision as a victory for anti-death penalty advocates.

Those furious over the decision have cited the horrific nature of the crimes the prisoners committed, including serial killers Randy Kraft, known as the “Southern California Strangler,” and Charles Ng, who was convicted of killing 11 people in California in the 1980s.

“Some of these people have killed multiple individuals. Some of them have shot cops in the back of the head. Some of them have kidnapped and murdered little girls,” Klaas said. “And he’s going to commute their sentences.”

Since becoming governor, Newsom has been grappling with the decision. He has held several meetings with families of victims, law enforcement officials and his legal team to weigh a choice he has acknowledged will unseal old wounds.

But the ink on Newsom’s decision is not entirely dry. California’s Supreme Court will need to approve clemency decisions in 382 cases in which prisoners were convicted of multiple felonies. And opposition groups have already pledged to challenge the move in court.

For Klaas, the decision has eroded his confidence in the state’s ability to hold criminals accountable.

“When Richard Allen Davis was convicted and sentenced, the prosecutor told me, ‘See, you can trust California’s criminal justice system,’” Klaas said. “Well, you can until you can’t. … The criminal justice system can turn on a whim.”

Holding a candle for Polly

On a night in October 1993, in her bedroom at home in Petaluma, California, Polly Klaas was in the throes of a slumber party with two friends, her mother sleeping in a nearby room, when a bearded intruder appeared in the doorway.

The man, later identified as Davis, threatened the girls with a knife, tied them up and gagged them, before finally slipping out of the home with Polly, according to court records. The massive search for Polly and a widely shared version of her missing child poster captured the concern of a national audience, who dubbed Polly “America’s Child.” A candle burned in her bedroom window for two months, extinguishing only when Davis confessed and led police to her body.

Three years later, Davis was found guilty of Polly’s murder, as well as robbery, burglary, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and attempted lewd conduct with a minor. When a jury recommended the death sentence, Klaas was “victorious,” telling reporters at the time, “Richard Allen Davis deserves to die for what he did to my child.”

Polly’s case helped propel increased “three strikes” penalties for repeat offenders in an era of tough-on-crime policies.

Today, Klaas’ home is full of pictures of Polly, grinning from under her shiny crown of chestnut curls.

Klaas was furious when Newsom placed a moratorium on executions in the state in 2019, granting an instant reprieve for California’s death row inmates, who make up more than a quarter of the nation’s death row population, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Thursday’s announcement ranks among the worst days of his life, he said. Though he knew Newsom had been weighing the decision, he was shocked he and other families were not notified ahead of the announcement.

In his letter, Newsom explained he was taking the action because “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.”

Klaas disagrees firmly, saying that Newsom’s decision undermines the results of numerous trials and jury decisions.

“Hundreds and hundreds of juries agonized over whether or not the individual whose trial they just sat for should be executed,” Klaas said. “In each one of those cases, a judge sentenced these individuals to be executed.”

The father also pointed out that California voters rejected ballot propositions in 2012 and 2016 that would have ended the death penalty in the state.

“It should have been something that everybody got a say in. It shouldn’t have been a unilateral decision by a lame-duck governor,” Klaas said.

Other relatives of Polly’s said they met with Newsom before he announced his decision. Annie Nichol, Polly’s half-sister, said she and Jess Nichol, Polly’s stepsister, asked the governor for a meeting last month and expressed their support for ending the death penalty. The sisters are from Polly’s mother’s side of the family.

Annie and Jess Nichol have previously supported the death penalty, and while their feelings about Polly’s killer have not changed, their perspective on the justice system has.

“We still experience grief and anger,” Annie Nichol said. “What we’ve come to believe is that those feelings, however understandable they are, shouldn’t determine public policy. The state can honor survivors’ anger without killing someone in our name.”

The sisters say the state should redirect resources it would have spent on maintaining death row to supporting victims and survivors. They also question how much closure an execution would bring.

“What the death penalty does to families is it keeps us waiting for a day that is supposed to make us whole,” Jess Nichol said. “But the thing is that the grief is still there. It will always be there.”

‘It’s all for nothing’

Several other victims’ family members, as well as groups including the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, Crime Survivors and the California District Attorneys Association have spoken out against Newsom’s move, saying it deepens victims’ wounds and oversteps the will of Californians and the court system.

Newsom, who’s mulling a 2028 presidential run, called the decision “among the most difficult of my career, not because I doubt its necessity for our state but because I know its announcement may surface excruciating memories for victims’ families.”

Among the outspoken families is that of 8-year-old Michael Lyons, who went missing in Yuba City in 1996. His body was found the next day on the banks of a river, and Robert Boyd Rhoades was convicted of his murder.

Syntara Fuller, Michael’s sister, condemned the sweeping nature of the commutation.

“He took every single monster, every single person that’s on the worst of the worst, the worst of California’s criminals, and he took them all together and gave them all life without parole,” Fuller told CNN affiliate KCRA. “And to know that not one case was looked at separately and just taken in for what it was, is really, really hard.”

Sacramento County Deputy Danny Oliver’s former sergeant, Chris Guerrero, still remembers witnessing his friend being pronounced dead in 2014 after Oliver was shot in the head, KCRA reported. He struggles knowing that Oliver’s killer, Luis Bracamontes, will remain alive.

“He’s going to live his life out,” Guerrero told KCRA. “And how pathetic and however his life is, he’s still alive. He’s still breathing,” Guerrero said of his friend’s killer. “And Danny’s in the ground.”

Long-fought victory for advocates

Groups who oppose the death penalty have lobbied Newsom’s office leading up to the decision, as the governor has long publicly expressed his personal conflict over the state’s capital punishment policy.

Paul Wilson, whose wife Christy was among eight people killed in 2011 at a salon shooting in Seal Beach, California – the deadliest shooting in Orange County history – said he wanted his wife’s killer to receive the death penalty instead of the life sentence he was given.

“At that moment, there was nothing other. There was zero punishment that would have made me happy except the death penalty,” Wilson said.

But after a long and complicated trial and witnessing families of victims of death row prisoners suffering through years of painful appeals, he has changed his mind.

Wilson said he has been working with a campaign to end the death penalty and participated in a conversation advocating for clemency with several staffers at Newsom’s office earlier this year.

“I’m very grateful to Newsom,” he said.

A coalition of victims’ families, law enforcement and civil rights leaders also commended the mass commutation on Thursday.

Among them was former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, who previously supported the death penalty and said his office sought death sentences in some of the cases affected by Newsom’s decision.

“I now see that the death penalty is a failed policy that detracts from real public safety solutions,” Garcetti said in a statement. He added, “The governor has made the right choice in balancing justice and ensuring that those inmates whose death sentences are commuted will spend the rest of their lives in prison.”

One of the most high-profile faces in the conversation surrounding capital punishment, Bryan Stevenson, condemned the death penalty as a “flawed, expensive, and error-filled practice that fails us all.”

“I commend Governor Newsom for this historic act and hope that other state elected officials follow his lead,” said Stevenson, who is the author of “Just Mercy” and founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative.

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CNN’s Dalia Faheid and Devon M. Sayers contributed to this report.