The Supreme Court today gave Governor Gavin Newsom permission to commute two prisoners’ sentences of life without the possibility of parole.  The governor is constitutionally required to get the court’s positive recommendation before he can grant clemency to anyone who, like the two, has been “twice convicted of a felony.”  The court has said it reviews clemency recommendation requests under a deferential standard of review.

Commutations were approved for:

Larry Garcia, who received his LWOP sentence after a 1988 conviction of first degree murder.  He has two prior felony convictions for robbery.

Omar Walker, whose LWOP sentence followed his 1997 conviction of first degree murder and robbery.  He has a prior felony conviction for selling marijuana.

The commutations will make Garcia and Walker eligible for parole suitability hearings.

Newsom is now 25 for 25 in having the court approve his pardons and sentence commutations, which is considerably better than former Governor Jerry Brown, who had the court, without explanation, block 10 intended clemency grants.

There are now 11 clemency recommendation requests pending before the court.  As mentioned, the oldest one — for Anthony Banks — was submitted a year ago today.  That was three months before Newsom sent the Garcia and Walker requests that were ruled on today.  The court has now ruled on a total of 10 requests that were submitted at the same time as, or later than, the Banks request.  The most recent seven requests were submitted just in March.

It’s possible a ruling on the Banks request has been delayed by a pending motion, filed last August by the First Amendment Coalition, to unseal the Banks clemency records.  The court today issued a revised policy on the confidentiality of such records, which notes that Penal Code section 4852 requires the court to return a record when clemency is recommended.  Maybe the wait has nothing to do with whether the Governor should be allowed to commute Banks’s sentence, but is because the court didn’t want to rule on the unseal motion until after it had finalized its new confidentiality policy and it didn’t want to send back the Banks record before it ruled on the motion.

Related:

Supreme Court finalizes revised policy on clemency record confidentiality

Is the Supreme Court indirectly holding up any attempt to empty California’s death row?

The Supreme Court’s clemency backlog hasn’t gotten any better

Motions fail to pry loose Supreme Court’s clemency denial reasons

Justice Liu invites resubmission of clemency requests that the Supreme Court rejected last year