California has not executed a prisoner since 2006, and one man on its death row says that is why he never expected to die by lethal injection.
He is one of 34 inmates condemned for killing a police officer.
He told the Daily Caller he made peace long ago with dying behind bars, and he blamed what he called California’s “broken system.”
“It was never gonna happen,” he said.
When police arrested him more than two decades ago, he preferred death to a life sentence. Over the years, the state’s long pause on executions changed his thinking.
His comments followed a decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, who commuted the sentences of all 548 death row inmates shortly after the 2026 midterm election.
It is the largest mass commutation of death sentences in U.S. history.
The California Constitution requires the state Supreme Court to review clemency grants for most inmates convicted on multiple counts.
The Caller interviewed six condemned men about the governor’s action. Their answers diverged sharply.
The police officer’s killer paused before walking his prison-issued dog and said he would never vote for Newsom because of their political differences.
He still voiced “newfound respect for him” for following through, though he said the move might “hurt” the governor’s political chances.
“I deserve to be in prison,” he said. He wishes he could apologize to the victim’s family but believes it would only reopen old wounds.
Ka Pasasouk, condemned for killing a rival and three witnesses outside a Los Angeles boarding home in 2012, welcomed the news.
The Caller asked whether the commutation might launch a presidential campaign. “I hope he does,” Pasasouk said.
“If you do run for president, I mean, it just gives me more hope because if you could commute death sentences, you could give people a chance to go home,” he said.
Pasasouk called his crimes a “mistake.” He said he wants to see his grandchild and go fishing. He did not learn to read or write until he landed on death row.
A final commutation would end his isolation and constant shackling, he said. He would gain access to social time, group programs, and personal development opportunities.
Edward Charles, sentenced for the 1994 murders of his parents and brother, declined to discuss the commutation. He said he plans to write Newsom a letter.
Other inmates rejected the move outright. Some told the Caller the commutations were “wrong.”
Miguel Crespo was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder when he received a death sentence for a later crime.
He bound, gagged, tortured, and killed his “transgender woman” cellmate within eight hours of being paired with her. Crespo is eligible for commutation.
Newsom has spoken publicly about violence against that community. In a post on X, he referred to “trans and gender non-conforming people taken from us by violence and discrimination.”
Crespo called the commutations politically motivated.
He said Newsom’s “political [ambitions] to become what he wish is at [innocent] people price,” and that the governor is “callous and [indifferent] to the [suffering] of others.”
Michael “Santos” Walters also opposed the decision. He called the timing after the election “all political” and “suspicious,” and he labeled it hypocritical.
Walters said he supports capital punishment and that “some of us should be killed.”
He made the remark between a graphic account of stabbing his pedophile cellmate 170 times and a long theory that prison guards watch him with cameras and military technology.
Christopher Henriquez, who murdered his pregnant wife and two-year-old daughter, has spent more than 30 years in prison. He said he has “little say so over this system that holds me.”
“As far as the decision made by Newsom,” Henriquez told the Caller, “with the way things have been going for me in this overall horrible situation, either way I will most likely die in prison. Whether that be by the state or natural causes, etc.”
He added, “My life has been one of many bad decisions, and the consequences that have followed. As I struggle with my addictions and flawed personality, at 55 I learned: all we should want people to remember of us is the good that we give the universe of humanity.”
