Gavin Newsom robbed my murdered friend of justice with his callous death row clemency

On Thursday night, Andrew Wagner was hit with a bombshell as he casually scrolled through X while taking a break at the gym.His feed was filled with the news that California Gov.

Gavin Newsom had commuted the death sentences of all 548 death row inmate in the state.“My blood was boiling,” said Wagner, a freelance sports journalist in Milwaukee.“One person overturned the will of 548 juries.”Newsom’s unilateral decision, which he explained in a three page letter, reopened a deep and painful wound for Wagner.His mind immediately flashed back to the devastating 2001 phone call informing him that his dear friend Christina Burmeister had been murdered near Los Angeles.

She was only 20.“[The news] felt like that call all over again.It’s that same gut punch,” he said.

“Christina was this beautiful young soul with her whole life ahead of her.”Burmeister, a student at Cal Poly Pomona, was headed to a fraternity party when she was kidnapped by James Dixon, his wife Markeisha and Henry Singer, who took her to two ATMs to withdraw money.They then drove her to the mountains, where a sadistic Dixon slit her throat, and left her to die in Azusa Canyon.“They got a total of $450 from her.

That could have been that,” he said of the theft.“Where was their mercy? They killed for fun.

They killed for lust.They killed for sport.”After her brutal murder, her bereft loved ones were tortured even further as authorities embarked on a frustratingly long search for her killers.

It took more than six years for the savages to be brought in front of a jury.In 2006, when the death sentence was handed down for Dixon, Burmeister’s grieving mother Rosalie Burmeister said, “It was true punishment for the crime that he committed.” She called it “justice.”Dixon was also found guilty of two unrelated rapes.Wagner provided a written victim’s impact statement at the sentencing.Wagner, who has remained close with the family, said they learned of Newsom’s deat...