Washington

Notable Cases

In March 2004, both hous­es of the Washington state leg­is­la­ture passed res­o­lu­tions stat­ing that Chief Leschi was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and exe­cut­ed in Washington ter­ri­to­ry in 1858 and asked the state supreme court to vacate Leschi’s con­vic­tion. The court’s chief jus­tice, how­ev­er, said that this was unlike­ly to hap­pen, since it was not at all clear that the state court had juris­dic­tion in a mat­ter decid­ed 146 years ear­li­er in a ter­ri­to­r­i­al court. On December 10, 2004, Chief Leschi was exon­er­at­ed by a unan­i­mous vote by a Historical Court of Inquiry fol­low­ing a tri­al in absentia.

Notable Exonerations

On March 2, 1994, U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan over­turned Benjamin Harris’ con­vic­tion and vacat­ed his sen­tence of death for the 1984 mur­der of Jimmy Turner on the basis that his orig­i­nal tri­al lawyer had been incom­pe­tent. Harris’s attor­ney inter­viewed only 3 of the 32 wit­ness­es list­ed in police reports and spent less than 2 hours con­sult­ing with Harris before tri­al. Harris’s co-defen­dant was acquit­ted. Bryan ordered Harris released from cus­tody if not brought to a speedy retri­al. The deci­sion was upheld by the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals on September 12, 1995. The pros­e­cu­tion decid­ed not to retry Harris but tried to have him con­fined as insane. (They had pre­vi­ous­ly argued that he was com­pe­tent to stand tri­al.) On July 16, 1997, a jury decid­ed that Harris should not be impris­oned at Western State Hospital. Harris main­tains his inno­cence and says he was framed.

Milestones in Abolition/​Reinstatement

Washington abol­ished the death penal­ty in 1913, but rein­stat­ed it in 1919. The statute remained unchanged until 1975, when it was again abol­ished. An Initiative to the People in the same year, Initiative 316, rein­stat­ed it for a sec­ond time as the manda­to­ry penal­ty for aggra­vat­ed mur­der in the first degree. U.S. Supreme Court rul­ings in Woodson v. North Carolina and Roberts v. Louisiana inval­i­dat­ed laws that man­dat­ed death sen­tences and the statute was mod­i­fied to give detailed pro­ce­dures for impos­ing the death penalty.

This new law was itself found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by the Washington Supreme Court, as a per­son who had pled not guilty could be sen­tenced to death, while some­one who pled guilty would receive a max­i­mum sen­tence of life impris­on­ment with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. The cur­rent law was passed in 1981 to cor­rect these constitutional defects.

On February 11, 2014, Governor Jay Inslee announced that he would issue a reprieve for any death penal­ty case that reach­es his desk. He indi­cat­ed that he did not intend to com­mute the sen­tences of the nine men on the state’s death row as part of this mora­to­ri­um, but no exe­cu­tions are expect­ed to occur while he is governor.

On October 11, 2018, in State v. Gregory, the Washington Supreme Court declared the state’s death penal­ty statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, say­ing that it was applied in an arbi­trary and racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry man­ner. You can read the plead­ings filed in the Washington Supreme Court here.

Other Interesting Facts

At the time its death penal­ty was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in October 2018, Washington was the only state with an active gal­lows. Death-row pris­on­ers in Washington were able to choose if their exe­cu­tion would be car­ried out by lethal injec­tion or hang­ing. If the pris­on­er made no deci­sion, the default method was lethal injection.

On September 10, 2010 Washington became the sec­ond state, after Ohio, to use a sin­gle dose injec­tion of sodi­um thiopen­tal as opposed to the typ­i­cal three-drug pro­to­col used in most other jurisdictions.

Resources

• Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
• Department of Corrections
• Prosecutors
• Public defend­er’s office
• Victims’ ser­vices

Washington Execution Totals Since 1976