Whenever a business decides to close its doors, it usually goes to great lengths to get rid of the remaining inventory. This is when we get the going-out-of-business “Blowout Sale:” guys in gorilla suits, and big-screen TVs for $199 — that actually weren’t stolen off a loading dock.

It is during these sales that businesses give deals to consumers who would otherwise never get anything of the sort.

Governors typically do the same thing with their constitutionally given powers to commute sentences and pardon convicted criminals.

As a lame duck four-term governor, Jerry Brown is already starting to give away the store, and this generosity could pay serious dividends for every jailbird with an ice pick and a bad temper.

This month alone, Brown issued 67 pardons and commutations. The governor’s mercy included commutations for 18 people who were serving life sentences, without the possibility for parole. He gave an outright pardon to a 42-year-old Fresno man from Cambodia who was convicted of murder in 1994 for shooting a gang rival, and was facing deportation by the Trump administration.

Former Brown appointees have called on the governor to commute the sentences of all 748 death row inmates in the state.

Of the 748 inmates currently on death row, 18 have exhausted all their appeals and theoretically shouldn’t be making any plans to find out if the swallows make it back from Argentina to Capistrano next March.

There are more doozies in this unsavory bunch. Topping the list: Harvey Heishman, who raped an Oakland woman, then killed her, just before she could testify against him in 1979. Right behind him: Richard Samayoa, who broke into a home in San Diego, and beat a young mother and her toddler to death with a wrench, in 1985. And not to be forgotten: Tiequon Cox, who murdered four family members of former NFL player and death-penalty advocate Kermit Alexander in Los Angeles.

But if former state public defender Quin Denvir had his way, the only chair these monsters will be sitting in … is at the barber shop.

In a 2016 letter to Brown, Denvir, shortly before his death, said that he had been “haunted by the death penalty” since 1977 when it was reinstated in California. He went on to say, “Now, in Pope Francis’ Year of Mercy, I would like to see California stop its, as (U.S. Supreme Court) Justice (Harry) Blackmun put it, tinkering with the machinery of death … I would respectfully ask you to exercise your gubernatorial clemency power to commute the sentences of the women and men on death row to life without possibility of parole.”

When asked about it by the Sacramento Bee, Brown’s office confirmed that it received the letter, but declined to comment.

And then bam! On March 28 the California Supreme Court issued an administrative order that opened the door for Brown to legally commute the sentences of every inmate on death row.

This development has prosecutors and victims going for the Rolaids.

Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys in Los Angeles County, told me that “prior to this order there was an impediment to the governor granting a commutation or clemency. It is a requirement that he get the concurrence of a majority of the state Supreme Court to do so when the individual concerned has two other felony convictions. That’s at least half the people on death row. Since the procedure is so seldom used it has rarely come up.”

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Gavin Newsom’s battery-powered virtue-signaling Hanisee — suspicious about the timing — continued, “yet, a few months after Proposition 66 became final, and the stays in Sims versus CDCR were lifted, the (California) Supreme Court, out of the blue, issued an advisory order? And in this order they basically state that if they are doing such a review it would be under an abuse of discretion standard, which is the lowest possible standard of review. And they make a point that this is an act of mercy so how can you ever find that an act of mercy is an abuse of discretion?They have basically green-lighted the governor to grant clemency to anyone despite this rule, and said they won’t interfere.”

Hanisee says the whole thing seems like an inside job to her. “I question how this issue came before the Supreme Court … they don’t mention it in the order. Why out of the blue did they feel the need to make such an order? Or were they asked by the governor’s office? The latter seems far more likely,” she said.

I suspect Hanisee is correct. Brown and his anti-death penalty cronies could very well be in collusion with the California Supreme Court to thwart the will of the people and effectively end the death penalty in the Golden State — something Jerry has been trying to do since his dad was governor back in the 1950s and 1960s.

Clarification: Quin Denvir died in 2016. His letter to Gov. Brown was sent in March of that year.

John Phillips can be heard weekdays at 3 p.m. on “The Drive Home with Jillian Barberie and John Phillips” on KABC/AM 790.