Bipartisan Effort to Abolish Death Penalty Gains Momentum in Washington

With the backing of the state’s governor and attorney general, Democratic and Republican sponsors of a bill to repeal Washington’s capital-punishment statute have expressed optimism that the state may abolish the death penalty in 2018. In 2017, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, was joined by former Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, in calling on the legislature to end the state’s death penalty. Ferguson, who has said “[t]here is no role for capital punishment in a fair, equitable and humane justice system,” is pressing legislators to take up the bill this year. Governor Jay Inslee featured the bill in his January 9, 2018 State of the State address, urging legislators to “leave a legacy that upholds the equal application of justice by passing a bill to end the death penalty in the state of Washington.” The bill, now numbered SB 6052, has bipartisan backing: two of its sponsors in each house are Republicans. And Senator Jamie Pedersen (D-Seattle), the chair of the Senate Law and Justice Committee, to which the bill has been referred, said “[t]he stars may be aligning now for support of doing away with the death penalty.” Both Republican sponsors in the Senate have questioned the value of the death penalty for murder victims’ families and stressed that capital punishment runs counter to conservative values. Sen. Mark Miloscia (R-Milton) wrote in a recent op-ed, “many murder victims’ families oppose capital punishment because it’s little more than a long, re-traumatizing process that doesn’t give them the justice that they deserve.” He said continuing with the death penalty is unjustifiable given its failure to contribute to public safety, its high cost, and the “ever-present risk of killing an innocent person.” Sen. Maureen Walsh (R-Walla Walla) said, “The death penalty isn’t really accomplishing a wonderful relief to [victims’] families.” The repeal bill was stalled in 2017 when Senator Mike Padden, the former judiciary committee chairman, refused to hold hearings on the bill. When Democrats gained control of the state senate after the November 2017 elections, Pederson replaced Padden, paving the way for committee action on the bill. “The votes are there,” Attorney General Ferguson said. “I’m reasonably optimistic that this could be the year.” Miloscia said he, too, is “highly optimistic …. I think this is something that people on both sides of the aisle want to get done.” Washington has a similar profile to other states that have recently abolished the death penalty. Its murder rate is significantly below the national average and, as with most of the states that have done away with capital punishment, it has a very low rate of murders of police officers. The high cost of the death penalty is also a factor for legislators. According to a 2015 Seattle University study, each death-penalty prosecution cost an average of $1 million more than a similar case in which the death penalty was not sought. In an email to the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association, Senator Walsh said “taxpayers foot the multi-million dollar appeals process for the accused and we spend $50,000/year for incarceration. … A life sentence with no chance of early release saves money and issues the ultimate punishment by denying the convicted their freedom and liberties for life.” Washington has not carried out an execution since 2010, and Governor Inslee—who imposed a moratorium on executions in February 2014—has said he will not allow executions to take place while he is in office.

(Lauren Gill, END OF THE DEATH PENALTY? WASHINGTON COULD BECOME NEXT STATE TO ABOLISH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, Newsweek, January 11, 2018; Max Wasserman, Could this be the year the death penalty is repealed in Washington state?, The News Tribune, January 10, 2018; Taylor McAvoy, Ferguson wants death penalty abolished, The Daily Sun, January 8, 2018.) See New Voices and Recent Legislative Activity.