{"id":490316,"date":"2026-10-09T11:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T11:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/490316\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T11:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T11:56:09","slug":"the-bay-area-killers-who-may-have-death-sentences-commuted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/490316\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bay Area killers who may have death sentences commuted"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Gov. Gavin Newsom reportedly considers commuting the sentences of all the people on death row in California<\/a> in the wake of Tennessee\u2019s botched execution of Christa Pike<\/a>, more than 500 condemned inmates from across the state await their fates.<\/p>\n

Of those sentenced to death, 42 people were convicted in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa counties: 16 in Alameda, 11 in Contra Costa, eight in San Mateo and seven in Santa Clara, according to a list published by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation<\/a>. California is one of 27 states that still allows death sentences, though the state last executed a prisoner in 2006<\/a>; the state has the largest population of people sentenced to death in the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernor Newsom has been clear about his position on the death penalty since his first year in office, when he ordered a moratorium on executions,\u201d said Diana Crofts-Pelayo, chief deputy director of communications for the governor\u2019s office.\u00a0\u201cHe believes the intentional killing of another person is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crofts-Pelayo did not confirm or deny the report that Newsom was considering the move.<\/p>\n

A state proposition passed in 2016 aimed to speed up the appeals process<\/a> for inmates sentenced to death, while voters rejected another that would have ended the death penalty. Newsom nonetheless implemented a moratorium on executions in the state in 2019<\/a>, calling it a \u201cpremeditated and discriminatory execution of its people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the moratorium, prosecutors across the state have continued to pursue death penalty convictions<\/a>. Front-running gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra has indicated he will keep in place<\/a> if elected, while Republican Steve Hilton said last month that though he opposed capital punishment, he would rescind the moratorium<\/a> because he felt it defied the will of the voters.<\/p>\n

But Newsom has also taken additional steps toward dismantling the death penalty. In 2020, he filed a brief with the state supreme court<\/a> arguing that the state\u2019s process of passing down death penalty sentences \u201cis now, and always has been, infected by racism.\u201d In 2022, Newsom took steps to dismantle death row at San Quentin State Prison<\/a>, moving its inmates to other prisons around the state.<\/p>\n

San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe said that those on death row committed crimes that were \u201cthe worst of the worst\u201d and should not be the recipient of a blanket decree but rather considered \u201ccase by case.\u201d Wagstaffe, who prosecuted San Mateo County\u2019s most recent death row conviction \u2014 of Alberto Alvarez, who killed an East Palo Alto police officer in 2006 \u2014 also said that he has not seen a case in the preceeding 16 years that merited consideration of the death penalty until that of Chunli Zhao, who is accused of killing seven migrant workers at a mushroom farm<\/a> in Half Moon Bay in 2023 and is scheduled to go to trial in January.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who are in there are not people who are victims of their circumstances,\u201d Wagstaffe said. \u201cIt goes against what those juries did, it goes against what the trial judges deemed appropriate in doing the sentence and it goes against what has been the will of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wagstaffe also noted that, if Newsom did choose to commute the sentences of all of those sentenced to death in the state, any inmates with two or more felony convictions prior to the conviction they were sentenced to death for would require the approval of the state supreme court.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like he has complete and unfettered discretion,\u201d Wagstaffe said.<\/p>\n

Officials with the district attorneys\u2019 offices in Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa counties could not be reached for comment on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at some of the convictions that could be under consideration for commutation by Newsom in the Bay Area, sorted by the year they were sentenced to death, according to Bay Area News Group archives.<\/p>\n

Alameda County<\/p>\n

2010: Christopher Evans was convicted in 2009 of one count of first-degree murder<\/a> for killing 28-year-old hairdresser Tina Marie Rose and one count of second-degree murder for killing 41-year-old Tommy Lee Brown at an Oakland hair salon in 2001 as revenge after Rose\u2019s brother punched him on the street.<\/p>\n

2008: Carl Molano was convicted of first-degree murder for the 1995 rape and killing<\/a> of 33-year-old Suzanne McKenna at a home in Hayward. He was also convicted of raping two additional women and assualting his ex-wife. Molano was arrested for the crimes in 2003 after DNA analysis linked him to the killing, and his death sentence came as a relief to the family members of McKenna. \u201cThis is everything we were hoping for,\u201d McKenna\u2019s sister-in-law said after his sentencing. \u201cWe did it for Sue. We pushed for (the death penalty) for the last four years and it prevailed.\u201d<\/p>\n

2007: A jury convicted Alex DeMolle of first-degree murder in the rape and killing of 11-year-old Jaquita Mack in Oakland in 1999<\/a>. Mack had been riding her bike around a neighborhood in East Oakland when DeMolle lured her into his residence by telling her she could play video games. He told police that he killed Mack after raping her because he \u201cdidn\u2019t want to be behind bars the rest of (his) life.\u201d<\/p>\n

2007: Irving Ramirez, a resident of Newark, was convicted in 2007 of murdering San Leandro police officer Nels \u201cDan\u201d Niemi<\/a>. After shooting Niemi as he turned to speak to another person, he then shot him six more times after he fell to the ground. \u201cThis was an unprovoked, calculated killing of a police officer,\u201d Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jon Rolefson said at the time of his sentencing.<\/p>\n

2002: James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud were convicted of the 1997 kidnapping, rape and murder of 22-year-old Pleasanton woman Vanessa Samson. They snatched her off the street before assaulting her for several hours as they drove to Lake Tahoe, then strangled her with a rope and dumped her body in a snowbank in a rural area of Alpine County.<\/p>\n

Contra Costa County<\/p>\n

2017: Darnell Washington was convicted in 2016 of the 2012 murder of 55-year-old Susie Ko<\/a>, a kindergarten teacher and mother of four, at her home in Hercules. Six weeks prior, Washington had escaped from San Bernardino County Jail and embarked on a crime spree, ultimately beating and stabbing Ko to death.<\/p>\n

2013: Nathan Burris was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for the 2009 killings of Caltrans toll taker Deborah Ann Ross, 51 of Richmond,<\/a> and Golden Gate Transit bus driver Ersie \u201cChuckie\u201d Everette, 58 of San Leandro, on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. He was motivated by the belief that Ross had become romantically involved with Everette after breaking up with him.<\/p>\n

2007: Alexander Hamilton fatally shot Pittsburg police Officer Larry Lasater, 35, while fleeing an armed robbery<\/a> at a supermarket in 2005 when he was 18 years old. He was convicted of robbery and murder alongside a co-defendant, who was not given the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the killing.<\/p>\n

2006: Robert Frazier, a 42-year-old man from Indiana, was convicted of the 2003 rape and murder of Kathleen Aiello-Loreck<\/a> as she took a midday walk on the Contra Costa Canal trail in Concord. The judge who sentenced him to death cited the cruelty of the crime, in which he blugeoned Aiello-Loreck over the head with a fencepost, as a factor in his decision.<\/p>\n

San Mateo County<\/p>\n

2010: Alberto Alvarez was convicted of first-degree murder for killing East Palo Alto police officer Richard May in 2006 as he chased him away from the scene of a fight before the pair exchanged gunfire. \u201cWhile there are really good things to be said about life in prison, what\u2019s important is that this is the ultimate penalty that the state of California can give,\u201d May\u2019s mother Clarice Merrill said after Alvarez was sentenced to death.<\/p>\n

1994: Celeste Carrington, of East Palo Alto, was convicted of the 1992 murders and robberies of two people during a crime spree on the San Francisco Peninsula<\/a>. At a shoe factory in San Carlos, Carrington killed\u00a0janitor Victor Esperanza before killing Caroline Gleason, a property manager, at a Palo Alto real estate office. She was also convicted of the attempted murder of a Redwood City pediatrician.<\/p>\n

Santa Clara County<\/p>\n

2002: Cary Stayner was convicted of killing three Yosemite tourists<\/a> \u2014 mother Carole Sund and her teenaged daughter Juli Sund, both of Eureka, and Silvina Pelosso, the exchange student who had been staying with them \u2014 at the motel where he worked, as well as Yosemite Institute employee Joie Armstrong in the park in February 1999. The case was prosecuted in a San Jose court.<\/p>\n

1997: Bobby Lopez was sentenced to death alongside two fellow gang members in the Nuestra Familia prison gang after being convicted of the murders of Larry Valles and Tony Herrera, who were drug dealers, in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

1997: John Travis was convicted in 1995 of first-degree murder, robbery and burglary for the 1991 killing of James Madden, who Travis attacked alongside another man with a stun gun and knife at the Leeward\u2019s Craft Store where he worked. The 35-year-old was found by coworkers with 32 stab wounds across his chest, stomach and throat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Gov. Gavin Newsom reportedly considers commuting the sentences of all the people on death row in California…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[184,7,9,8,47515,124424,3290],"class_list":["post-490316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-death-penalty","tag-execution","tag-newsom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}