[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----WASHINGTON

[Rick Halperin]

October 11


WASHINGTON:

Washington Supreme Court tosses out state’s death penalty

The ruling makes Washington the latest state to do away with capital 
punishment. The court was unanimous in its order that the eight people 
presently on death row have their sentences converted to life in prison.


Washington state’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the death penalty, as 
applied, violates its Constitution.

The ruling Thursday makes Washington the latest state to do away with capital 
punishment. The court was unanimous in its order that the eight people 
currently on death row have their sentences converted to life in prison. Five 
justices said the “death penalty is invalid because it is imposed in an 
arbitrary and racially biased manner.”

“Given the manner in which it is imposed, the death penalty also fails to serve 
any legitimate penological goals,” the justices wrote.

Four other justices, in a concurrence, wrote that while they agreed with the 
majority’s conclusions and invalidation of the death penalty, “additional state 
constitutional principles compel this result.”

Gov. Jay Inslee, a one-time supporter of capital punishment, had imposed a 
moratorium on the death penalty in 2014, saying that no executions would take 
place while he’s in office.

In a written statement, Inslee called the ruling “a hugely important moment in 
our pursuit for equal and fair application of justice.”

“The court makes it perfectly clear that capital punishment in our state has 
been imposed in an ‘arbitrary and racially biased manner,’ is ‘unequally 
applied’ and serves no criminal justice goal,” Inslee wrote.

The ruling was in the case of Allen Eugene Gregory, who was convicted of 
raping, robbing and killing Geneine Harshfield, a 43-year-old woman, in 1996.

His lawyers said the death penalty is arbitrarily applied and that it is not 
applied proportionally, as the state Constitution requires.

In its ruling Thursday, the high court did not reconsider any of Gregory’s 
arguments pertaining to guilty, noting that his conviction for aggravated first 
degree murder “has already been appealed and affirmed by this court.”

(source: Associated Press)