Washington Governor Jay Inslee Suspends All Executions
Joining a growing chorus of governors and states to stop participating in the barbaric and savage practice of capital punishment, Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced ten days ago (1) that he was implementing a moratorium on the death penalty because there are too many flaws in the system.
One of the factors leading to his decision is that more than half of all death sentences imposed in Washington since 1981 have been overturned.
Today we can no longer close our eyes to the obvious fact that our justice system is deeply flawed: eye witness testimony has been shown to be unreliable in 77% of cases (a future article will go into more detail); almost all murder confessions are either coerced or made to avoid the death penalty; police fabricate incriminating evidence while prosecutors hide exculpatory evidence; informants lie to reduce their own sentences; blood types, individual fibers, hair samples, paint fragments, tire tracks, handwriting, bitemarks and other so-called forensic evidence do not have any high degree of scientific certainty (and in some cases are bogus science), and DNA is not available in 80% of all murder cases.
Before the Internet, before DNA, we willy-nilly executed innocent people. Currently only D.C. and 18 states do not have the death penalty. I expect the death penalty to be abolished nationally before 2020. Sound too optimistic? Just a few years ago no one would have believed any state would be permitting the lawful sale of recreational marijuana. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
ENDNOTES
(1):
The New York Times, 11 Feb 2014, Executions Are Suspended by Governor in Washington
The governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, announced Tuesday that no executions would take place in the state while he remained in office, despite the fact that the death penalty was legal there.
Citing “problems that exist in our capital punishment system,” Mr. Inslee, a Democrat, said he would issue a reprieve in any death penalty case that crossed his desk, though he would not let any death row prisoners go free. A future governor could reverse this action, he noted, and order an execution to be carried out.
The move makes Washington the latest in a series of states to step away from capital punishment and makes Mr. Inslee the third Democratic governor in recent years to say something similar. Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon announced in 2011 that he would not permit any executions on his watch, and last year Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado issued an indefinite reprieve in the only death penalty case during his tenure.
