No one called Michael's mother before the governor spared his killer

Michael Lyons was eight when he was taken on his walk home from school in Yuba City on May 16, 1996. His mother, Sandy Friend, kept going to court for him for almost thirty years. A week before Christmas last year, a judge upheld the death sentence of his killer, Robert Rhoades, and told the family, "You deserve finality." She thought she had it.

On November 5, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in an open letter that he would commute all 548 death sentences in California to life without parole. It is the largest mass clemency in U.S. history, and it came the same day Florida, Alabama and Indiana each executed a man. He called it "a righteous action" and wrote, "I alone bear responsibility." He had thought about sparing only some, he said, but people harmed by these crimes taught him "that each experiences their loss as the worst of the worst." Friend's answer, in a statement to the Sacramento Bee, was shorter: "Governor Newsom commuted every death sentence in California, and no one contacted me first."

The Bible's first murder ends in something close to a commuted sentence. Cain kills his brother Abel in a field, and God comes looking for Abel. Cain says he doesn't know where he is. God asks what he has done, and tells him his brother's blood is crying out to him from the ground.

Before God decides anything about the killer, he listens to the one who was killed.

What he decides next is exile. Cain is driven off the ground that took in his brother's blood, and when he protests that anyone who finds him will kill him, God answers:

Genesis 4:15Yahweh said to him, "Therefore whoever slays Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold." Yahweh appointed a sign for Cain, lest any finding him should strike him.

That mark is hard news for anyone who wants the first murder to end in an execution, because God guards Cain's life and warns everyone else away from it. It's hard news for the governor's side too, because of what comes first. God hears the blood before he spares the killer, and the mercy comes from the one the blood cried out to.

Hearing the families wouldn't have produced one answer. Polly Klaas's killer is among the 548. Her father, Marc, says Newsom gave "the gift of life to [hundreds of] people who took the gift of life from their victims." Her sister, Jess Nichol, once wanted the death penalty and now says, "The system tells survivors that execution matters to our healing. It doesn't." Genesis never hands the mourners a veto over mercy, though it does give their cry the first word.

Friend put it plainly: "Michael was not a number on a death row list. He was a little boy. He was my son." The governor's letter counted 548. When God came to Cain after the killing, his first question named one brother. Mercy may still be the right call in California, and it owes the grieving a hearing before it is given in their name.