Lush Cosmetics urges Gov. Newsom to clear California’s death row

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OPINION – Lush Cosmetics has launched a campaign at our 35 California locations calling on Governor Gavin Newsom to commute all death sentences. From January 9 – 20, every store is featuring a window display and in-store materials to educate our customers on how to voice their support.

Some may wonder why a beauty company would take on an issue such as the death penalty. Those people don’t know Lush.

Since 2006, we have been campaigning online and in our shop windows, tackling human rights, environmental justice, and animal protection issues that most brands would find too controversial to take on. Campaigning is a core value of our business, and an integral part of the ethics that make Lush, Lush.

Our advocacy against capital punishment goes back almost a decade. In 2017, our Death ≠ Justice campaign raised awareness about the failures of the death penalty, especially the risk of executing innocent people. Through the sales of the limited edition 31 States Bath Bomb, named for the number of states which had the death penalty in place at the time, we raised $132,000 for national abolition efforts. We also released a documentary, Exonerated, about Kwame Ajamu, an innocent man who spent 28 years on Ohio’s death row for a crime he didn’t commit.

Understanding Lush’s history of standing against the death penalty makes it clear why we’re speaking out now. Governor Newsom, in his last year in office, has a historic opportunity to clear California’s death row — the largest death row in the U.S. – and cement the anti-death penalty legacy he has built throughout his years representing Californians. We firmly believe he cannot let this moment slip away.

It’s clear to us that the death penalty doesn’t address the root causes of crime and that we need systemic solutions across the justice system in order to create safer communities. Nationwide, the death penalty is deeply flawed. Evidence shows that executions frequently go wrong, causing immense and prolonged suffering, with Black people 220% more likely to suffer botched executions than white people. It is applied unfairly and in a racially biased manner, harmful to nearly everyone who is touched by it — including many victims’ families — rampant with wrongful convictions, and wasteful of precious taxpayer resources.

California’s death penalty is no exception. Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1977, eight Californians who had been sentenced to death have been exonerated and released from death row because they were innocent. All of them were men of color.

It has been consistently shown that the death penalty can be more expensive than life terms. By commuting all death sentences, Governor Newsom can make available hundreds of millions of dollars that could instead be invested in communities to build public safety strategies that meet their needs, solve scores of other cases, and provide critical services to care for the victims of violence and their families.

Thankfully, there has been significant progress towards abolition in California. Much of this is in part thanks to Governor Newsom, who issued a statewide moratorium on executions in 2019, subsequently dismantled California’s death chamber, and ultimately relocated its death row residents to general population units throughout the state.

These are applaudable acts of leadership — and Lush was among many business voices to publicly give our support — but this progress is not irreversible. The fact is as long as people remain under a death sentence, the threat of execution never fully disappears.

Now, by commuting every death sentence to life without the possibility of parole, Governor Newsom can ensure that no future administration can undo the progress already made, all while demonstrating the moral courage and political leadership needed to reinvigorate momentum towards ending the death penalty nationwide.

Lush is proud to join the growing coalition of activists and community leaders across the state calling on the Governor to act. We echo fellow business leaders like Sir Richard Branson and Matthew Stepka — members of the global Business Leaders Against the Death Penalty campaign, which Lush is proud to be a part of — who have already voiced their support.

But what matters most to us at Lush is that, with our state-wide campaign, we’re now joined by our customers across California — thousands of people who share our passion for building a better world. Together, we call on Governor Newsom to do the right thing: commute California death sentences and secure the legacy of fairness and justice already set in motion.

Carrie Harambasic is the Head of Business Development for Lush North America.