在政治中，勇气是罕见的。对于像加文·纽森这样的政客来说，勇气尤其艰难且充满风险，他怀有入主白宫的雄心，任何失误都可能让他失去一切。稳扎稳打才是明智之举。周四，纽森采取了一个只能被形容为勇敢的立场，一个冒险的立场——将加州548名被判处死刑的男女的死刑减为不得假释的终身监禁。许多人现在就会停止阅读，因为说实话，你在乎死囚牢房里那些人的命运吗？
Courage in politics is rare. It's especially difficult and fraught for a politician such as Gavin Newsom, who has Oval Office ambitions and everything to lose from a misstep. Playing it safe is playing it smart. On Thursday, Newsom took what can only be described as a courageous stand, a risky stand — commuting the death sentences of the 548 men and women condemned to die in California, and instead seeking to change their sentences to life without parole. Many people will stop reading right now because honestly, do you care what happens to those on death row?
他们强奸、谋杀、抢劫、折磨——你能想到的滔天罪行，他们中总有人干过。他们并不是最值得同情的一群人，而事实上，我们许多人对死刑的感受是矛盾的。正是这种矛盾、这种不确定，让纽森的举动如此耐人寻味。我们正处在一个最不可思议的时刻——目睹一位精明的政客自我施加的政治耐力考验，而他本不必走到这一步。
They've raped, murdered, robbed, tortured — you name the heinous crime, one of them has done it. They are not the most sympathetic lot, and in truth many of us have ambivalent feelings on the death penalty. It's that ambivalence, that uncertainty, that makes Newsom's move so interesting. We are in the most unlikely of moments — witnessing a self-inflicted test of political endurance from a savvy politician who didn't need to go there.
在这些奇怪的日子里，当一位总统候选人仅仅因为相信这是正确的事而承担不必要的风险时，会发生什么？纽森将遭到那些自称对犯罪强硬的人的口诛笔伐。可以预料，他们会叫嚷说他是在绕开人民的意愿，不尊重犯罪受害者和陪审团。有人会说，他关心罪犯胜过关心受害者。福克斯新闻一定会大肆炒作。纽森公开思考这一决定已有一段时间，称这是一个“摇椅”式的选择——有朝一日他很可能回首审视，判断自己是否践行了自己的理想。
What happens in these strange days when a presidential hopeful takes an unnecessary risk simply because he believes it's the right thing to do? Newsom will be roasted by those claiming to be tough-on-crime types. They will predictably cry that he is circumventing the will of the people and disrespecting crime victims and juries. Some will say he cares more about criminals than victims. Fox News is going to have a field day. Newsom has publicly pondered this decision for some time, calling it a "rocking chair" choice, one he's likely to look back on someday to judge whether he lived up to his own ideals.
他曾说过，他在道德上反对国家以杀戮来证明杀戮是坏的。随着他的任期结束，他只剩下几个月的时间来依据这一信念采取行动，之后，终结西半球最大死囚牢房的权力就会从他手中溜走。
He has said he is morally opposed to the state killing to prove killing is bad. As he terms out of office, he had only a couple months left to take action on that belief before the power to end the largest death row in the Western hemisphere slips out of his hands.
“衡量我们对价值观忠诚与否的标准，在于当坚守这些价值观最为艰难之时，我们如何行动，”纽森在致加利福尼亚人的一封信中宣布这一决定时写道。他说，对他来说，这就是这种时刻之一。“美国人正在寻找更有原则的领导力，”民权律师布莱恩·史蒂文森告诉我，并辩称纽森的这一举措实际上与选民的意愿同步。史蒂文森是纽森就死刑问题交谈过的人之一，也是位于阿拉巴马州的“遗产博物馆”的创始人，该博物馆追溯了从奴隶制到大规模监禁的脉络。
"Faithfulness to our values is measured by how we act when its most difficult to uphold them," Newsom wrote in a letter to Californians announcing his decision. This, he said, was one of those moments for him. "Americans are looking for leadership that is more principled," civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson told me, arguing Newsom's move is actually in sync with the electorate. Stevenson is one of the people Newsom has talked to about the death penalty, and the founder of The Legacy Museum in Alabama, which traces the line from slavery to mass incarceration.
他说，令人震惊的“蓝色浪潮”中期选举表明，美国人不仅厌倦了为残酷而残酷，他们厌倦了不公，厌倦了自私自利的领导人，厌倦了担心自己的政府仅仅因为有能力就可能碾压他们。在全国范围内，选民选出了有主张的政治领袖——他们不随波逐流，而是凭借自己的价值观和对更美好美国的愿景参选，即使这并非主流或稳妥之举。
The shocking blue-wave midterms showed that Americans aren't just tired of cruelty for cruelty's sake, he said. They are tired of injustice, tired of selfish, self-serving leaders, tired of fearing that their own government might crush them simply because it can. Across the country, voters elected political leaders who stood for something — who bucked the trends to run on their values and vision of a better America, even if it wasn't mainstream or safe.
因此，无论美国人是否同意纽森将这些死刑判决减为无期徒刑不得假释的决定，选民正处于一个时刻，我怀疑，就像史蒂文森所认为的那样，他们可能会拥抱他坚持主张的勇气，即使他们不同意他所坚持的具体主张。死刑是政府碾压权力的终极表现。多年来，对死刑的支持一直好坏参半，即便在自由派中也是如此——尽管年轻人支持死刑的可能性较小。
So whether Americans agree with Newsom's decision to commute these sentences to life without parole or not, voters are at a moment when I suspect, like Stevenson does, that they may embrace his courage to stand for something, even if they don't agree with what that something is. The death penalty is the ultimate expression of that power of government to crush. Support for it has been mixed for years, even among liberals — though young people are less likely to back it.
在几乎所有西方民主国家，包括几乎整个欧洲、加拿大和新西兰，死刑均已被废除。美国有27个州要么废除了死刑，要么由州长下令暂停执行（纽森几年前在加州颁布了暂停令）。拜登在卸任前夕将大多数联邦死刑犯的死刑判决减刑，多年来其他几位州长也这样做过。美国也日益认识到……种族偏见已经深深植根于我们使用死刑的方式之中。
It has been banned in nearly every Western democracy including almost all of Europe, Canada and New Zealand. Twenty-seven U.S. states have either abolished it or have gubernatorial moratoriums on it (Newsom enacted one in California a few years ago). And Biden commuted the death sentences of most federal inmates in his final days of office, as have several other governors over the years. There has also been a growing understanding in the U.S. that race bias is baked into how we use the death penalty.
死囚牢房里的大多数人都是黑人和棕色人种，而受害者是白人的犯罪更有可能被判处死刑——即使我们判错了也是如此。自20世纪70年代以来，全美已有200多名死囚被证明无罪——其中包括加利福尼亚州的八人——这意味着，我们每处死八个人，就有另一个人本来会被国家杀死，直到我们发现他们是无辜的。因此，虽然可以从道德上论证反对国家杀人来证明杀人是错误的，但也有一个现实层面的理由：事实证明，我们非常不擅长公平地、甚至正确地判处死刑。
Black and brown people make up the majority of those on death row, and crimes where the victim is white are more likely to draw the death sentence — even when we get it wrong. More than 200 people on death row have been exonerated across the United States since the 1970s — including eight in California — meaning that for every eight people we have put to death, there has been one other who was going to be killed by the state until we figured out they were innocent. So while there's a moral argument to be made against the state killing people to prove killing people is wrong, there's also a practical one: It turns out we're really bad at imposing a lethal sentence fairly, or even correctly.
维森特·贝纳维德斯·菲格罗亚就是明证。在死囚牢房度过25年后，司法系统终于意识到，对他的定罪犯了一个可怕的错误。菲格罗亚不仅是被草率地判处了死刑——罪名是谋杀、强奸和鸡奸一名幼童——这起犯罪本身很可能从未真正发生过。菲格罗亚是一名季节性农场工人，墨西哥移民，高中都没毕业。1991年，他在中央谷地照看女友的孩子们时，有15分钟没看住最小的孩子孔苏埃洛。
Vicente Benavides Figueroa is proof of that. After 25 years on death row, the justice system finally realized it had made a terrible error in his conviction. Figueroa wasn't just railroaded into a lethal sentence — for the murder, rape and sodomy of a toddler — the crime itself likely never actually happened. Figueroa was a seasonal farm worker, a Mexican immigrant with less than a high school education, who was watching his girlfriend's kids in the Central Valley in 1991 when he lost track of the youngest, Consuelo, for 15 minutes.
等他找到她时，她正在前院，没有反应，还在呕吐。接下来事情一件接一件——用他的民事律师萨洛蒙·萨瓦拉的话说，是一场“草率”的调查；不合格的翻译；一个主要由白人组成、与他背景相去甚远的陪审团；以及错误的医学证词——菲格罗亚被定了罪。司法机器运转得如此残酷，以至于菲格罗亚直到被送到圣昆廷监狱才明白自己被判了死刑。
When he found her, she was in the front yard, unresponsive and vomiting. One thing led to another — a "reckless" investigation, as his civil attorney Salomon Zavala, describes it; faulty translators; a mostly white jury that was far from his peers; and erroneous medical testimony — and Figueroa was convicted. The machine of justice was so grinding that Figueroa did not understand he had been sentenced to death until he got to San Quentin.
几十年后，那些声称孔苏埃洛遭到强奸和鸡奸的医生会意识到，那些伤情很可能是医护人员试图插入成人尺寸导尿管造成的创伤所致。他们撤回了证词。
Decades later, the doctors who claimed Consuelo was raped and sodomized would realize the injuries were likely due to trauma from medical workers attempting to insert an adult-sized catheter. They recanted.
辩方聘请的新专家提出理论，认为这名儿童曾被汽车撞击，导致其遭受了致命的大面积内伤。证人现在一致认为，这名儿童从未遭到强奸或鸡奸。2018年，州最高法院以原审中存在虚假证据为由，推翻了菲格罗亚的定罪。律师萨瓦拉对我说：“无论你对死刑持何种道德立场，我认为我们都必须从制度责任的角度来看待这个问题。我们必须认真思考，作为一个社会，我们是否能够接受处决一个可能无辜的人。”
New experts, hired by the defense, theorized the child had been hit by a car, causing the extensive internal injuries that killed her. The witnesses now agreed the child had never been raped or sodomized. Figueroa's conviction was overturned by the state Supreme Court in 2018, citing false evidence in the original trial. "No matter what your moral position is on the death penalty, I think we have to look at it from a standpoint of institutional responsibility," Zavala, the lawyer, told me. "We have to really think about whether we, as a society, are comfortable with executing someone that could potentially be innocent."
我认为，以正义之名错误地杀死一个人，哪怕只有一人，也嫌太多——死刑是一种不可接受的风险。我无意贬低任何受害者、他们的经历或观点的重要性或痛苦。他们的痛苦是真实而持久的，肯定会有一些人觉得纽森的决定剥夺了他们某种最终的了结。但痛苦不能定义正义。人们很容易忘记，纽森的配偶本身就是暴力犯罪的幸存者，他比任何人都更清楚康复之路有多么复杂、艰难和私人，这种痛苦不仅影响受害者，也影响家庭和社区。
I'm of the mind that erroneously killing one person in the name of justice is one too many — that the death penalty is an unacceptable risk. I take nothing away from, nor mean to diminish, the importance or pain of any victim, their story or their point of view. Their pain is real and enduring, and surely there will be some who feel Newsom's decision robs them of some sort of final resolution. But pain cannot define justice. It's easy to forget that Newsom is married to a survivor of violent crime, and knows as well as anyone that how complicated and difficult and personal the journey to recovery is, and how that suffering affects not just victims, but families and communities.
但国家是否应该从事杀戮，必须是一个更大的决定，需要我们在并非痛苦不堪的时刻集体考量。纽森的决定正是这样做的，正如史蒂文森所说，它试图超越“那些只是代表大量恐惧和愤怒的表演性判决”，推动我们的司法系统走向一个符合促进安全与公平而非复仇这一理想的制度。而即便如此，州最高法院仍将对其中大多数赦免拥有发言权，因为在涉及重罪的案件中，纽森需要获得他们的批准。
But whether or not the state should be in the business of killing has to be a bigger decision that we consider collectively in moments when we are not distress. Newsom's decision does that, seeking to go beyond "these performative sentences that just represent a lot of fear and anger," Stevenson said, and move our justice system towards one that lives up to the ideal of promoting safety and fairness over vengeance. And even then, the state Supreme Court will have a say in the majority of these clemencies, since Newsom needs their approval in cases where there are repeat felonies.
但这是他本不必去捅的马蜂窝——这将是我们所能得到的关于纽森作为领导者究竟是怎样一个人最清晰的表态。这也及时提醒我们，价值观有时、偶尔，仍然在政治中占有一席之地。
But it's a can of worms he didn't have to open — the clearest statement we'll ever get of who Newsom is as a leader. And it's and a welcome reminder that sometimes, occasionally, values still have a place in politics.