The death penalty was abolished in Washington state on Thursday after Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation to that effect into law.
Aside from the death penalty, Senate Bill 5087 repealed several other laws, including one that made sterilisation a criminal offence. The bill was passed earlier this month by the Democratic-controlled legislature.
“In 2014, I initiated a moratorium against the death penalty in Washington State, and our rationale for that decision was affirmed by our (state) Supreme Court decision in 2018, when they invalidated the death penalty statute,” Inslee said during the bill signing on Thursday. “They made it clear, and we know this to be true, that the penalty has been applied unequally and in a racially insensitive manner.”
Death penalty opponents, including the state’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter, applauded the decision.
“Racial bias plays a role in death penalty decisions here in Washington and across the United States,” the group’s legislative director, M. Lorena González, said in a statement to AWN on Friday. “We are pleased that the Washington state Legislature has finally finished the work of ending this arbitrary and discriminatory practise.”
Republicans, like state Rep. Jim Walsh, have criticised the plan, calling it “another sad example of the interests of criminals being put ahead of the interests of victims and their families” in a Facebook post earlier this month.
The death penalty was declared unlawful by Washington state’s Supreme Court in 2018 because it was implemented inconsistently. The use of the death penalty varied depending on the location of the crime or the race of the accused, which the court held at the time was a violation of the state constitution. The ruling also found that the county of domicile and financial resources were important considerations.
According to data from the Death Penalty Information Centre, Washington state has carried out five executions since the US Supreme Court reintroduced capital punishment in 1976. All of the defendants were white.
However, studies have shown that race does have a role in jury choices to sentence a prisoner to death. According to a 2014 analysis by the University of Washington, jurors in the state are “more than four times more likely to impose a death sentence if the defendant is black.”
According to data from the Death Penalty Information Centre, there were 2,414 persons on death row in the United States as of April 1, 2022. According to the centre, capital punishment is allowed in 27 states.