3 Murders Fuel Sonoma County Sheriff’s Opposition To Newsom Death Penalty Plan

HEALDSBURG, CA — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to replace the death sentences of all 548 people on California’s death row with life imprisonment is drawing opposition from law enforcement.

Newsom announced his clemency decision Thursday, citing his moral opposition to capital punishment.

In an open letter to Californians, Newsom argued that executions undermine justice and human decency.

Sonoma County Sheriff Eddie Engram blasted the decision, saying that the move would undermine confidence in the judicial system and force victims’ families to revisit crimes that changed their lives.

California voters rejected efforts to abolish the death penalty in 2012 and 2016. Voters also approved Proposition 66 in 2016 to expedite death penalty appeals. Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019.

Engram cited three Sonoma County murder cases in opposing the proposed commutations.

Richard Allen Davis kidnapped 12-year-old Polly Klaas from her Petaluma home and murdered her in 1993.

Ramon Salcido murdered seven people, including members of his family, during a killing spree across Sonoma County in 1989.

Robert Walter Scully murdered Sonoma County sheriff’s Deputy Frank Trejo in the line of duty in 1995, five days after leaving prison.

All three men were convicted and sentenced to death.

In 2024, a California judge denied Davis’s petition to recall his death sentence for killing Klaas, whose murder changed California’s sentencing laws.

Before Newsom’s announcement, law enforcement leaders across the state, including the California District Attorneys Association, urged the governor to reject blanket commutations.

Engram said the California State Sheriffs’ Association also criticized the proposal.

“We spoke on behalf of murder victims, fallen deputies and officers, their families, and the colleagues who continue to carry the weight of those losses,” Engram said in a statement. “Our pleas apparently went unheard.”

Engram said victims’ families endured investigations, trials, sentencing proceedings and years of appeals. They trusted courts to weigh evidence and impose sentences authorized by California law, he said.

The governor should have given greater consideration to those families, officers who served alongside murdered colleagues and others affected by the crimes, Engram said.

For members of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, Trejo’s murder remains deeply personal, he said.

“His sacrifice is part of our history,” Engram said. “We have not forgotten him, his family, or the colleagues who served alongside him.”

Engram pledged support for victims’ families and the investigators who worked on the cases.

“Their lives mattered then, and they matter today,” he said of the victims.