Death penalty struck down by high court
T he Wash i ngton state Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down the death penalty there as unconstitutional and “racially biased,” a ruling that makes it the latest in a string of states to abandon capital punishment in recent years.
Washington st ate had already halted any executions under a moratorium put in place by Gov. Jay Ins- lee, D, in 2014, so the order issued Thursday will not stop already planned executions. But the court’s order, which declares that death sentences in the state should be con- verted to life in prison, is a sweeping rejection of capital punishment at a time when it is being used less nationwide and as states are struggling to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections.
In their opinion, the justices focused on what they said was the unequal use of the death penalty, describing it as a punishment meted out haphazardly depending on little more than geogra- phy or timing.
“The death penalty is invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner,” the justices wrote. “While this particular case provides an oppor- tunity to specifically address racial disproportionality, the underlying issues that under- pin our holding are rooted in the arbitrary manner in which the death penalty is generally administered.”
Chief Justice Mary Fair- hurst wrote the opinion and four justices concurred, one in the result only. Four other justices signed a concurrence saying they agreed with “the majority’s conclusions and its holding invalidating the death penalty” but adding other state constitutional factors they said “compel this result.”
The arguments outlined in Washington have echoes of what Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has said in questioning whether the death penalty itself is constitutional. In a 2015 dissent joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Breyer called the death penalty’s use “capricious, random, indeed, arbitrary” and said for those sen- tenced to death, it was “the equivalent of being struck by lightning.”
Breyer echoed that point in 2016 when discussing California’s use of the death pen- alty, saying it similarly was unreliable, arbitrary and plagued by delays.
The opinion in Washington was issued in a case that has lingered in the crimi- nal justice system for more than two decades, center- ing on a man convicted and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Gene- ine Harshfield in July 1996.
Allen Eugene Gregory, who was convicted and sentenced for Harshfield’s death, is one of eight people on Washing- ton’s death row; five of those people are white and three, like Gregory, are black. Greg- ory, 46, was first convicted and sentenced in 2001 and then, when his case was overturned, convicted and sentenced again in 2012.
Washington currently has two methods of execution, according to the corrections department: Lethal injection or hanging, if the inmate opts for the latter. The state last carried out an execution in 2010.
Maryland repealed capital punishment in 2013, but it was not until the following year that the state’s then-governor, Martin O’Malley, D, said he would commute the state’s remaining death sentences. Connecticut abandoned the death penalty in 2012 but left it open as an option for crimes committed before that point; the state’s high court said in 2016 that this option was unconstitutional.
In one recent case, a state scrapped the death penalty only to reverse course. Nebraska lawmakers abolished it in 2015, but voters wound up restoring it through a ballot initiative the following year. The state carried out an execution earlier this year, the first in the United States using the powerful opioid fentanyl.
Washington has already been among the states not moving forward with executions under the moratorium Inslee announced in 2014. Oregon also has a moratorium on the death penalty, which Gov. Kate Brown, D, decided to keep in place when she took office.