California Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled a plan to review death row commutations one case at a time by stapling every case together and reviewing it once, sources have confirmed.
The governor demonstrated the procedure in Sacramento with a pneumatic stapler borrowed from a roofing crew.
It punched through eleven inches of court records and fastened the entire proposal to his desk.
“That’s how you keep a decision from getting tied up in paperwork,” Newsom said.
A prosecutor asked whether the governor intended to weigh the circumstances of each case.
Newsom nodded and directed two aides to carry the stack to a freight scale.
“Eighty-six pounds,” an aide announced.
The governor called it the most thorough weighing of the evidence in state history.
When the prosecutor asked how victims’ families would be heard, a staffer pointed to a microphone at the back of the room.
It was plugged into a shredder.
The staffer said they were still working out the audio.
A reporter asked whether the same streamlined process could help Californians waiting on permits to rebuild their homes. Newsom recoiled.
“Those are individual decisions,” he said. “You have to look at each one.”
As of press time, the roofing crew had asked for its stapler back and been told to submit a separate request for each moving part.
How cruel and insensitive the Governor of the state of California has shown himself to be. I really feel for the families of the victims. There is no justification the Governor’s actions.