Posted on 10/11/2018 3:31:36 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Washington’s Supreme Court unanimously struck down the state’s death penalty Thursday, ruling that it had been used in an arbitrary and racially discriminatory manner.
Washington has had a moratorium on executions since 2014, but the ruling makes it the 20th state to do away with capital punishment by legislative act or court decree. The court converted the sentences of the eight people on Washington’s death row to life in prison.
“The death penalty is unequally applied — sometimes by where the crime took place, or the county of residence, or the available budgetary resources at any given point in time, or the race of the defendant,” Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst wrote in the lead opinion. She added: “Our capital punishment law lacks ‘fundamental fairness.’”
Defense lawyers had long challenged the death penalty on those grounds, noting the state’s worst mass murderers and serial killers, Green River killer Gary Ridgway among them, had received life terms, not death. In a 5-4 ruling in 2006, the justices rejected an argument from a death row inmate that he shouldn’t be executed because Ridgway hadn’t been executed.
This time, death penalty critics were armed with more data about how capital punishment works, including a statistical analysis by University of Washington sociologists. Their report showed that although prosecutors were not more likely to seek the execution of black defendants, juries were about four times more likely to sentence black defendants to death. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Washington, can you also sing, “California, Here We come”?
“Just round up some white folks at random.”
That’s next.
L
Yeah, they pick numbers out of the phone book and if the number belongs to a black person they mark him for execution.
Soon they will end racially-biased every other crime in the statute books.
The Washington State Supreme Court has their collective heads up their keisters, not that Washington State legislators will do anything about it.
The court converted the sentences of the eight people on Washington’s death row to life in prison.
Prediction two - one of these formally death row convicts will kill again.
It would be nice if these judges could be charged with accessory when it happens.
The Torah decrees the death penalty for wanton premeditated murder. Why? Is G-d cruel? He knows that if gross evils are tolerated by a society then eventually the whole society will die. That goes for every violation of Torah that incurs capital punishment. Do not think that mankind can spit in the face of heaven and live. Western Judeo-Christian civilization is being destroyed by hate. Hate of G-d and hate of righteousness. The so called “Progressive” movement is not new and it is not progressive. It is filthy and decadent and no such visions can survive G-d’s Judgement and Wrath; they never have and they never will.
Judicial tyranny once again.
Could it possibly be that some minorities kill more frequently than other groups?
They got life in exchange for confessing to all their murders and leading police to the bodies. With death off the table, what leverage does the prosecutor now have?
I live in Washington and I don’t remember the last time anyone was executed here.
“The death penalty is unequally applied “
I doubt it.
We call them the Seattle Supreme Court.
Apply capital.punishment only to white males especially if they are accused by a female...no witnesses or evidence needed
“Death penalty”- I thought they were going to talk about death & estate taxes.
Won’t even read the tripe - but my guess is that Blacks commit violent crimes at a rate of 6 time what Whites do and are put to death 5 times as much...so the real disparity is that they let a lot off but that isn’t good enough.
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