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A California prosecutor said Thursday he plans to challenge a new statewide death row clemency push in court after highlighting the twisted impact of nearly 50 death row inmates in his county expected to benefit from Gov. Gavin Newsom 's call for blanket clemency for all the state's condemned prisoners. " When we go to court, and we file on Monday, we're going to make unequivocally clear to the Supreme Court that they are being asked by the governor to overturn the decisions they made affirming these death cases," Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said Thursday, alongside a group of victims' families and advocates. He said the court is in a "legal quagmire" after reviewing hundreds of cases and confirming the convictions and death sentences — only to now be asked to reverse their own decisions. "I'm praying, and I think we may have to actually get down on our knees on this one, that those justices understand," he said. Spitzer called for Newsom's blanket clemency requests to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, just like the trials and appeals were. "This is an extraordinary power, commutation," Spitzer said. "It is to be used in extraordinary situations, not with the wave of a magic wand ." Three of Orange County's death row inmates killed police officers, according to Spitzer's office. One killed at least 16 young men and is suspected of dozens of additional murders. Another killed an Arizona couple to raise money for a sex-change, which was finally obtained behind bars on the taxpayers' dime. Spitzer's office released information on all the cases and spoke alongside the families of victims and other advocates. Here are just a few examples: Randy Steven Kraft acquired multiple nicknames in a murder spree between 1972 and 1983, the "Scorecard Killer," the "Southern California Strangler" and the "Freeway Killer." He is on death row after convictions for raping, torturing and murdering at least 16 young men over 11 years. He is the suspect in 51 additional deaths of young men and boys. "Bedroom Basher" Gerald Parker, a serial home invasion rapist who killed five women and an unborn baby in the 1970s, remained free until DNA testing linked him to the crimes in 1996. He received a death sentence in 1998. Steven Dean Gordon was already a convicted child molester when he and an accomplice killed at least four women between 2013 and 2014. Billy Joe Johnson, a White supremacist gang member, "begged for the death penalty" after his role in five murders, including that of a childhood friend and fellow gang member. Read the full Skylar Deleon are known as the "Yacht Killers" after they kidnapped an Arizona couple in Newport Beach, tied them to an anchor and drowned them 55 miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean to raise money for a sex-change operation. Deleon is a former child actor, born John Jacobson Jr. and was separately convicted of the 2003 murder of an associate named Jon Jarvi from Anaheim. "Cold Storage Killer" John Joseph Famalaro abducted a 23-year-old woman named Denise Huber at gunpoint in 1991 when he saw her on the side of the road with a flat tire. He brought her to a warehouse where he sexually assaulted her, tied her up and beat her to death with a hammer and a crowbar, then kept her body in an industrial-grade freezer truck. Spitzer is among a wave of California district attorneys pushing back after Newsom's call for clemency last week. The state's Supreme Court is expected to review hundreds of cases before clemency would be official. While California hasn't executed a condemned inmate in 20 years, death row inmates have largely been excluded from progressive criminal justice reforms made to lighten sentences on other offenders. "Gov. Gavin Newsom’s commutation of the death sentences of all 548 condemned inmates in California is mercy for the wolves...while inflicting the ultimate act of cruelty on the sheep," Spitzer said in a prior statement. With death row off the table, critics like Spitzer consider them closer to further leniency — and even potential release. Newsom's office has countered that the prisoners in question are not eligible for new state parole board guidelines that critics warn could one day clear a path to freedom.
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