Newsom Confesses His Role in the Euthanization of His Mother | The American Spectator

In an interview with the Washington Post published Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted that he sat approvingly by his mother’s bedside as she was euthanized in an act that, at the time, legally amounted to homicide. Assisted suicide was legalized in California in 2015; prior to that time, any deliberate killing of a person — even with that individual’s consent — would be considered a homicide.

Newsom has previously admitted involvement in his mother’s death by euthanasia, and it is something that I covered in my book on Newsom’s life, Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power.

But his new interview gives additional details that reveal the extent of his complicity in the killing of his mother.

As we previously knew, Newsom’s 55-year-old mother, Tessa, informed him in a voicemail that she planned to die by euthanasia and asked him to be present for her death. Newsom agreed. The governor told the New Yorker that he then spent time with his mother in the days leading up to her planned death, including when he made her dinner the night before her killing. This means Newsom knew that Tessa was going to be illegally killed and he did not stop or dissuade her.

Newsom told the Washington Post that he, alongside his sister, prepared his mother for her killing by giving Tessa a dose of painkillers 45 minutes before the doctor was to arrive for his deadly deed so as to, in the Post’s words, “keep her comfortable.”

Let’s pause there for a moment. Newsom gave his mother painkillers, which have the effect of relaxing a person, leaving her softened and ready to be injected with a lethal dose of drugs. This has the definite appearance of a person who is aiding the commission of illegal euthanasia. It also raises the question of whether Newsom’s mother was cognitively capable of agreeing to her killing when it happened (putting aside the fact that her consent has no impact on the legality of her killing). Those painkillers that Newsom gave Tessa before the doctor arrived could very well have played a part in her death.

Newsom claimed to the Washington Post that Tessa was able to lucidly answer the doctor’s questions when he arrived to kill her. Of course, however, we will never know if she was really cognitively unaffected by the painkillers.

Sometime after the homicidally minded doctor arrived, the killing became too much for Newsom’s sister, Hilary, who left the room. According to the Washington Post, it was Tessa’s “labored breathing” as well as “the gravity of the moment” that caused her daughter to flee. Newsom, it seems, was the only other person present to witness the homicide. He did nothing to stop it. Stopping the murder would have been as simple as threatening to call the police or turn the doctor in, but he decided to sit by and watch it happen.

Evidently, his mother’s death was not peaceful. In his soon-to-be-released memoir, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery, which aims to get ahead of the many damaging stories of Newsom’s past (many of which I recount in my own biography of Newsom), Newsom describes the look on his mother’s face as she was killed. The look on her face in her last moments, Newsom said, “will never leave my mind.” He said, “There was no peace that blanketed her.”

It was a fatal dose of morphine that stopped Tessa’s heartbeat. But it was her son who had let it all happen by refusing to intervene.

“I want to say it was a beautiful experience,” Newsom told the Post. “It was horrible.”

In my book, I explain how California had a law on the books in 2002, the time of the killing, that made it a felony to “deliberately aid[], or advise[], or encourage[] another to commit suicide.” The crime was punishable by up to three years in state prison and a fine of $10,000. In 1975, after a California man “stood by while his wife committed suicide,” a spokesman for the district attorney’s office referenced this law and “warned that helping another person commit suicide was still violation of the law,” according to the Columbia Law Review. However, the man was not charged. And given how liberal California is, Newsom is similarly unlikely to be charged under this statute for his role in his mother’s death by euthanasia.

As I explain in my book, U.S. courts have generally held that illegally euthanizing someone should be prosecuted under homicide statutes. The 1953 opinion of the Oregon Supreme Court in the case State of Oregon v. Bouse explained this, stating, “[W]here a person actually performs, or actively assists in performing, the overt act resulting in death, such as shooting or stabbing the victim, administering the poison, or holding one under water until death takes place by drowning, his act constitutes murder, and it is wholly immaterial whether this act is committed pursuant to an agreement with the victim, such as a mutual suicide pact.” It would certainly seem as though the doctor’s action of giving Tessa an illegal dose of morphine would constitute murder.

Gavin Newsom committed grave evil by sitting approvingly by for his mother’s killing. When he hits the campaign trail, Americans should ask themselves if they really want a man like this in the White House.

Ellie Gardey Holmes is the author of Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power.

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