Days before Easter, Newsom announces dozens of pardons and commutations

Newsom also granted a posthumous pardon to William Burwell, who helped organize protests as a student at San Fernando Valley State College, now California State, Northridge, during the Civil Rights Movement. Burwell was arrested in 1969 and convicted of misdemeanor trespass and failure to disperse during a racial justice protest on campus in 1969, according to the governor’s office.