Why Gavin Never Met Samantha

In the open letter explaining his commutation of all 548 convicts on California’s death row, Gov. Gavin Newsom describes the convicted murderers as “people with death warrants,” “the people sentenced to death in California,” “condemned persons,” and “offenders.” The term “criminal” never appears.

These “offenders” caused “indescribable suffering to victims, their families, communities and our state as a whole,” said Newsom, who failed to name a single beneficiary of his commutation or a single one of their victims. Here’s a couple names the people should know.

Five-year-old Samantha Runnion, a resident of Stanton, California, “had the face of an upturned blossom.” On July 15, 2002, Alejandro Avila, claiming he was looking for a lost dog, forced the child into his car. The six foot, 200 pound Avila, 27 years old and with a history of molestation, took Samantha to a remote canyon. There he repeatedly raped her then murdered the child by strangulation and blunt force trauma. More than 4,000 people attended Samantha’s funeral.

Police matched the victim’s DNA to the child’s tears found in Avila’s car. In 2005, a jury found Avila guilty of kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder and an Orange County judge sentenced him to death. In 2014, California’s Supreme Court upheld the sentence. By all indications then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom never spoke out on the case. Newsom was elected governor in 2018 and one of his first actions was to issue reprieves for 737 inmates on California’s death row, including Avila and “Grim Sleeper” Lonnie Franklin, convicted of 10 murders.

On Gov. Newsom’s watch in 2020 during COVID, California paid out $1 billion in unemployment claims to prison inmates, including more than $400,000 to death-row inmates including Scott Peterson, Cary Stayner, and Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped, raped, and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Those three are included in Gov. Newsom’s 548 commutations along with Isauro Aguirre, who tortured and killed an eight-year-old boy he thought was gay, and Alejandro Avlia, who raped and murdered Samantha Runnion.

“I do however pray that this action will finally separate the memories of the victims of these crimes from the fate of those who harmed them,” Gov. Newsom wrote. “Now we can let these offenders die in obscurity while we forever remember and honor their victims.”

California parents might have a problem with the use of “harmed” for what happened to Samantha Runnion, Polly Klass, and other brutally slain children. Gov. Newsom seems to have no memory of what the “offenders” did to them, and Californians can be forgiven for believing that his support for violent criminals overrides support for their victims.

“State-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values,” Newsom contends in his letter, “First among them justice and human decency.” That raises issues Californians, particularly parents, might run by the outgoing governor, a longtime supporter of abortion without limits.

In September, Gov. Newsom signed legislation to expand access to “medication abortion,” and “expanding the ability of certified nurse-midwives, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants to perform abortions.” The late jazz critic Nat Hentoff, an atheist, wondered if a change of address makes you a human being. Newsom’s daughter Brooklynn was born on July 3, 2013. Was Brooklynn a human being on July 1, or June 25?

According to California attorney general Rob Bonta, Gov. Newsom’s commutation “marks a new era for justice in our state” but there’s room for reasonable doubt.  Gov. Newsom regards recurring governor Jerry Brown as the greatest political mind “in our lifetime.” In September 2018, Gov. Brown signed Senate Bill 1391, which allows anyone under age 16 to murder any number of people, be tried only in juvenile court, and gain release at age 25.

Adults who murder innocent children can keep their own life and maybe grab some unemployment benefits. If parents thought California will be less just and less safe it would be hard to blame them.