State & Federal
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 9th 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.
Washington Execution Totals Since 1976
News & Developments
News
Apr 24, 2023
Washington’s Unconstitutional Death-Penalty Law Stricken from the Books
On April 21, 2023, Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation removing the death penalty from the state’s laws. With that action, all three branches of the state’s government have taken steps to end capital punishment in Washington: Gov. Inslee had declared a moratorium on executions in 2014, the state Supreme Court found the statute unconstitutional in 2018, and the legislature has now stricken it from the criminal code.
Read MoreMar 08, 2020
Legislative Roundup — Recent Legislative Activity as of March 7
Washington — A bill that would formally remove Washington’s judicially abolished death penalty from the state’s statute books has failed. SB 5339, which passed the state senate on January 31 and was approved by the House Committee on Public Safety on February 27, did not come up for a vote on the floor of the state House of Representatives by the March 7 deadline for consideration during the 2020 legislative session. The failure has no effect on the judicial abolition of the state’s death penalty in 2018. It was the…
Read MoreFeb 28, 2020
Legislative Roundup — Recent Legislative Activity as of February 28, 2020
Virginia — The House Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee voted 13 – 9 on February 25 to approve a bill that would make the identity of any entity that provides execution drugs public information. SB 270 passed the Virginia Senate by a 22 – 18 vote on February 4. It can now be considered by the full House of Delegates.
Read MoreFeb 12, 2020
Major Newspapers in Ohio, Washington Editorialize in Favor of Death Penalty Repeal
As state legislatures in Ohio and Washington contemplate the future of their death-penalty statutes, major newspapers in each of the states are advocating legislative repeal.
Read MoreFeb 03, 2020
Washington Senate Passes Bill to Formalize Repeal of Capital Punishment
For the third consecutive year, the Washington State Senate has voted to remove the death penalty from the state’s statute books. In a 28 – 18 vote praised by abolition advocates for its bipartisanship, four senate Republicans joined 24 of their Democratic colleagues on January 30, 2020 to formally repeal Washington’s capital punishment law. With a new Speaker replacing Democratic leadership who had prevented the bill from coming up for a vote in the House in 2018 and 2019, the prospects of the bill passing in the 2020 legislative session are considered…
Read MoreDec 23, 2019
DPIC Analysis: Death Penalty Erosion Spreads Across the Western United States in 2019
In a year of declining death-penalty usage across the United States, nowhere was the erosion of capital punishment as sustained and pronounced in 2019 as it was in the western United States. Continuing a wave of momentum from Washington’s judicial abolition of capital punishment in October 2018, one state halted executions and dismantled its death chamber, another cleared its death row, two cut back on the circumstances in which the death penalty could be sought and imposed, and the entire region set record lows for new death sentences and executions.
Read MoreMar 14, 2019
NEW PODCAST: The Race Study that Convinced the Court to Declare Washington’s Death Penalty Unconstitutional
In October 2018, the Washington Supreme Court unanimously struck down the state’s death penalty, finding that it had been “imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.” In reaching its decision in State v. Gregory, the court relied upon a study of twenty-five years of Washington State capital prosecutions that demonstrated that Washington juries were 4.5 times more likely to impose a death sentence on a black defendant than on a white defendant in a similar case. The authors of that study, Dr. Katherine Beckett (pictured, left) and Dr. Heather…
Read MoreDec 13, 2018
Report on “Principles for the 21st Century Prosecutor” Calls for Prosecutors to Work to End Death Penalty
A group of justice-reform organizations has issued a new report, 21 Principles for the 21st Century Prosecutor, that calls on prosecutors to “work to end the death penalty” as part of its recommended reforms in prosecutorial practices. The report, prepared jointly by the organizations Fair and Just Prosecution, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the Justice Collaborative, sets forth a series of principles that the groups say are designed “to improve the overall fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system.” The report sets forth 21 principles of prosecution for…
Read MoreOct 12, 2018
Washington Supreme Court Declares State’s Death Penalty Unconstitutional
Finding that the death penalty “is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner,” a unanimous Washington Supreme Court has struck down the state’s capital-punishment statute as violating Washington’s state constitutional prohibition against “cruel punishment.” The court’s ruling, authored by Chief Justice Mary E. Fairhurst and issued on October 11, 2018, declared: “The death penalty, as administered in our state, fails to serve any legitimate penological goal; thus, it violates article I, section 14 of our state constitution.” The decision also converted the sentences of all eight people on the…
Read MoreJul 17, 2018
POLL: Washington State Voters Overwhelmingly Prefer Life Sentences to Death Penalty
A new poll of likely voters in Washington State shows that Washingtonians are nearly 3 times more likely to prefer some form of a life sentence to the death penalty as punishment for defendants convicted of murder.
Read MoreApr 13, 2018
Washington Supreme Court Unanimously Finds Reversible Error, But Upholds Prisoner’s Conviction and Death Sentence
A fractured Washington Supreme Court unanimously found that a death-row prisoner’s constitutional rights had been violated under circumstances that had always before required overturning a conviction and granting a new trial, but nevertheless voted to uphold his conviction and death sentence. In five opinions spanning 254 pages published on April 12, 2018, the nine justices agreed that Conner Schierman’s (pictured) rights to be present and to a public trial were violated during the jury selection process in his case when the court discussed potential challenges for cause related to six…
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