When my wife, Christy, was murdered in 2011, my life was torn apart. My wife was the center of my universe. She was a mother of three, a grandmother, a friend and the person I expected to grow old with. She was working in a hair salon when a man walked in and brutally and senselessly shot and killed her and seven other people in the blink of an eye.

Despite this experience, I strongly support Gov. Gavin Newsom’s move on Thursday to commute all of California’s death sentences to life without parole. My endorsement of this historic decision comes not from any soft-hearted feelings, but from my personal experience with the flawed and harmful death penalty system.

For a long time, all I could think about was revenge. I wanted Christy’s killer to be punished. More than that, I wanted him to die. I believed the death penalty was the only punishment that could match what he had done.

But an unexpected and painful series of events eventually led me to question whether the death penalty would provide the justice that I sought.

It was not sympathy for the murderer that changed my mind. It was what I learned about our criminal justice system — and what the pursuit of a death sentence did to the families of the people who were killed, including mine.

The defendant pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder in 2014. There was no question that he had committed these horrific crimes. But instead of bringing the case to a swift conclusion, the pursuit of the death penalty set off years of additional litigation.

Evidence emerged of a countywide practice of illegally manipulating jailhouse informants to obtain convictions. The investigation revealed that even in this case, where guilt was not in question, prosecutors had failed to turn over important evidence to the defense. This delayed resolution of the case.

At first, I blamed the defense lawyers for these delays. I wanted them to stop fighting and let the state carry out the punishment I believed my wife’s killer deserved.

But as I sat through hearing after hearing, I began to see something differently. The system I had trusted to deliver justice had failed — not only the defendant, but also the victims and their families.

After sitting in that courtroom for months feeling it drain my very soul, I didn’t want to endure decades of additional legal proceedings that come with the death penalty. That process was pure agony, and I didn’t believe the other victims’ families, some of whom were begging for it to end, should be put through it either.

In 2017, the judge imposed eight consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. By then, I had come to understand that life without parole could permanently incapacitate the killer while allowing our families to finally step away from a legal process that had consumed so much of our lives.

That experience is why I support Newsom commuting the sentences of everyone currently on California’s death row to life without parole.

A commutation does not erase a crime. It does not mean forgiving someone. And it does not require victims’ families to forgive, forget or stop grieving. It changes the punishment from death to a sentence that keeps people imprisoned while recognizing that our justice system is capable of making mistakes and being manipulated by the very people entrusted to administer it.

California has not executed anyone since 2006, and the state’s death penalty has remained entangled in years of legal challenges. Meanwhile, people sentenced to death can spend decades in prison while their cases move through the courts.

I know what it feels like to want someone to die because they took the person you loved most from you. I know the anger. I know the desire for punishment.

But I also know what happens when the machinery of death becomes part of a victim’s life. It can prolong the suffering rather than resolve it. And when that machinery is operated by a system capable of withholding evidence, abusing its authority and failing the people it is supposed to serve, we should not pretend that such a system delivers justice.

Newsom is offering California a justice system that holds people accountable without claiming the power to take another life. From where I sit — as a husband who lost his wife to murder — I believe that is the right call.

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Paul Wilson is a California resident whose wife, Christy, was murdered in a 2011 Seal Beach shooting.

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