Newsom commutes 548 death sentences by invoking the clause that hands hundreds back to four judges

…(cont) Here's where he slowed me down. Same wire page, a couple of inches under the governor's sentence: "The state Supreme Court will have the final say in hundreds of those cases." Ronnie had me read that out loud, twice, and then he explained the clause the way you'd explain it to a man holding a dog's leash: in California, for somebody convicted of a felony twice, a governor's clemency needs the state supreme court to recommend it, four of the seven justices concurring. That isn't Ronnie talking, that's the page he pulled up on his phone. And it wasn't only Ronnie — a district attorney told a paper the same day that the commutation faces a legal hurdle, and a criminal defense attorney went on television and said the move was impossible to view outside a political lens. The moral case and the sign-off are printed on the same day, in the same story, about the same 548 people. How does a man read both of those and know which one he signed?

I went through my own clippings after Ronnie left, because he says you date everything. In September an editorial page called the governor's deference to Kamala Harris "a masterstroke" — their word, not mine, I wrote it down because I had to look it up. On October 2, Tennessee halted all of its executions after Christa Pike was left in critical condition. On October 20, the governor of Alabama commuted one death row sentence. One. A name, a signature, and a sentence that was different the next morning.

Now the part I actually understand, because it's in my garage. The opener on the big door is mine. I bought it, I hung it, I pay for the current it draws. My wife's father, when he lived with us, ran a slide bolt through the track on the inside, because he didn't trust the opener, and he was right not to. So I stand in the driveway in the rain and press my own button, and the motor hums, the chain pulls, the door lifts an inch and a half and stops, because his bolt is in the track and the bolt doesn't know whose button it is. The door isn't up. It isn't down either. It has been announced. And if I tell you my car got out Friday morning, you'd be right to ask whether the door went up or whether I just heard the motor from the driveway.

Oh — excuse me, before you go. One thing and I'll leave you to your drink. The announcement says all 548. The page says the court decides hundreds of them. So Friday morning, in those hundreds, which sentence are those men serving — the one he announced, or the one they had on Wednesday? And how many people have to sign before that question has an answer?