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.

Inslee said the new leg­is­la­tion con­firms the con­cerns that were raised about the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in Washington: ​“The [Court] made clear, and we know this to be true, that the penal­ty has been applied unequal­ly and in a racial­ly insensitive manner.”

In the 2018 rul­ing, the jus­tices cit­ed a 2014 study by the University of Washington that found that death sen­tences were four times more like­ly to be imposed on Black defen­dants com­pared to white defen­dants in sim­i­lar cas­es. Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst wrote in the major­i­ty opin­ion, ​“To the extent that race dis­tin­guish­es the cas­es, it is clear­ly imper­mis­si­ble and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.” The court also resen­tenced Washington’s eight death row pris­on­ers to life without parole.