In a plea agree­ment reached with Washington state pros­e­cu­tors, Gary Ridgway, a Seattle-area man who admit­ted to 48 mur­ders since 1982, will serve a sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole. Prosecutors spared Ridgway from exe­cu­tion in exchange for his coop­er­a­tion in lead­ing police to the remains of still-miss­ing vic­tims. (Associated Press, November 5, 2003) The state’s plea agree­ment rais­es ques­tions of pro­por­tion­al­i­ty in sen­tenc­ing when com­pared with the oth­er inmates on the state’s death row. The arbi­trary and unpre­dictable appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment once led the U.S. Supreme Court to hold that the death penal­ty was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 1972. In Furman v. Georgia, one of the con­cur­ring Justices described receiv­ing the death penal­ty as ran­dom as being ​“struck by light­ning” – the facts of the crime car­ried lit­tle weight in pre­dict­ing who would receive cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. See Life Without Parole.

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