In People v. Harmon 1960 54 Cal.2d 9the defendant, a prisoner, was convicted of assaulting a guard and sentenced under a statute that mandated the death penalty. After pronouncement of judgment but before it became final, the statute was amended in a way that made the death penalty discretionary. The issue before the California Supreme Court was whether the defendant was entitled to the benefit of the amendment. ( Harmon, supra, 54 Cal.2d. at pp. 20-21.) The court acknowledged the common law rule of mitigation but considered it inapplicable. Reading the amendment together with the general statutory savings clause (see Gov. Code, 9608), the court found an intent to make the amendment prospective. The court cited numerous cases for the proposition that under the general savings clause, "where a penal statute is repealed, or amended to reduce the legislatively prescribed punishment, after a defendant has violated the statute and before judgment of conviction thereof has become final, the defendant is punishable under the law as it read when his offense was committed." ( Harmon, supra, 54 Cal.2d at p. 21.) The Harmon court explained that if the severe penalty under the former statute "is to have its intended deterrent effect, then it is important (where, as here, the Legislature is silent on the question) that the section should be applied with certainty as it read on the date of the offense. The law as to this defendant has not accomplished all of its intended function; he did not reflect and refrain from stabbing his fellow prisoner. But certainty of application, particularly in the present situation, can still have a deterrent effect on other prisoners--and thereby save the lives of still other prisoners and guards." ( Id. at pp. 26-27, )