In a sweep­ing rul­ing on July 16, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney held that California​’s death penal­ty is so dys­func­tion­al as to amount to cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. Vacating the death sen­tence of Ernest Jones, who has been on death row for almost 20 years, Judge Carney said the pun­ish­ment can­not serve the pur­pos­es of deter­rence or ret­ri­bu­tion when it is admin­is­tered to a tiny select few, decades after their sen­tenc­ing: ​“Inordinate and unpre­dictable delay has result­ed in a death penal­ty sys­tem in which very few of the hun­dreds of indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to death have been, or even will be, exe­cut­ed by the State. It has result­ed in a sys­tem in which arbi­trary fac­tors, rather than legit­i­mate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the death sen­tence, deter­mine whether an indi­vid­ual will actu­al­ly be exe­cut­ed. And it has result­ed in a sys­tem that serves no peno­log­i­cal pur­pose. Such a sys­tem is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.” Read the Court’s Opinion.

Although a District Court’s rul­ing is applic­a­ble to the sole case before it, the court’s ratio­nale would clear­ly apply to every­one on the state’s death row: ​“For the rest [on California’s death row], the dys­func­tion­al admin­is­tra­tion of California’s death penal­ty sys­tem has result­ed, and will con­tin­ue to result, in an inor­di­nate and unpre­dictable peri­od of delay pre­ced­ing their actu­al exe­cu­tion. Indeed, for most, sys­temic delay has made their exe­cu­tion so unlike­ly that the death sen­tence care­ful­ly and delib­er­ate­ly imposed by the jury has been qui­et­ly trans­formed into one no ratio­nal jury or leg­is­la­ture could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote pos­si­bil­i­ty of death.” (empha­sis in original).

(Jones v. Chappell, No.: CV 09 – 02158 (U.S. Dist. Ct. Central Dist. of CA, July 16, 2014). See Arbitrariness and Time on Death Row.

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