Washington became the 20th state to do away with capital punishment Thursday. There are currently eight people in the state on death row. Cal Coburn Brown, who was executed in 2010, could be the last. The Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the death penalty violates the state’s Constitution. However, the court did not rule out the possibility that the Legislature could come up with another manner of imposing death sentences. "We leave open the possibility that the legislature may enact a 'carefully drafted statute' to impose capital punishment in this state, but it cannot create a system that offends constitutional rights," the opinion said. Attorney General Bob Ferguson said he would press the Legislature to make the sole punishment for aggravated murder life in prison without release. Also see | Family of victim reacts to death penalty ruling Here’s a brief history on the death penalty in Washington state, including the eight people who are currently on death row. Who has Washington executed? Washington has executed 78 people since 1904, none of whom were women. Of those 78 executions, 66 were white. The majority of executions were before 1975 when Washington reinstated the death penalty after Furman v. Georgia. Washington has executed five people in the last 25 years, the most recent of which was Cal Coburn Brown in 2010. Brown died by lethal injection for the 1991 murder of a Seattle-area woman. Who’s still on death row? Jonathan Lee Gentry: convicted June 26, 1991 of fatally bludgeoning Cassie Holden, 12, on June 13, 1988 in Kitsap County. Clark Richard Elmore: convicted on July 6, 1995 of one count of aggravated first-degree murder and one count of rape in the second degree for the rape and murder of Christy Onstad, 14, the daughter of his live-in girlfriend on April 17, 1995 in Whatcom County. Cecil Emile Davis: convicted February 6, 1998 of one count of aggravated first-degree murder for the suffocation/asphyxiation murder of Yoshiko Couch, 65, with a poisonous substance after burglarizing her home, robbing and then raping her January 25, 1997 in Pierce County. Dayva Michael Cross: convicted June 22, 2001 for the stabbing deaths of his wife Anouchka Baldwin, 37, and stepdaughters Amanda Baldwin, 15, and Salome Holle, 18 in King County on March 6, 1999. Robert Lee Yates Jr.: convicted September 19, 2002 of murdering Melinda Mercer, 24, in 1997 and Connie LaFontaine Ellis, 35, in 1998 in Pierce County. Conner Michael Schierman: convicted April 12, 2010 of four counts of aggravated first-degree murder in the deaths of Olga Milkin, 28; her sons Justin, 5, and Andrew, 3; and her sister, Lyubov Botvina, 24, July 16, 2006 in King County. Allen Eugene Gregory: reconvicted May 15, 2012 of first-degree aggravated murder for the rape and murder of 43-year-old Geneine “Genie” Harshfield on July 26, 1996 in Pierce County. Originally convicted and sentenced to death on May 25, 2001, Gregory’s case was overturned by the Washington Supreme Court on November 30, 2006. The original charge was upheld in a retrial and the death sentence was reissued on June 13, 2012. Byron Eugene Scherf: convicted May 9, 2013 of aggravated first-degree murder for the murder of Correctional Officer Jayme Biendl on Jan. 29, 2011 while she was on duty at the Washington State Reformatory Unit of the Monroe Correctional Complex in Snohomish County. How does Washington execute inmates? Inmates can choose two methods of execution: Lethal injection or hanging. If the inmate doesn’t have a preference, lethal injection is used. Washington is also the only state with an active gallows, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Has anyone been released from death row? Just one person. In 1994, a district judge overturned Benjamin Harris’ conviction for the 1984 murder of Jimmy Turner. The judge ruled Harris’ original trial lawyer had been incompetent, because the attorney interviewed just three of the 32 witnesses in police reports and spent less than two hours prepping with Harris for trial. Jurors found Harris mentally ill in 1997, and he was put in a program to learn living skills. He was later released and died in 2008, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Has Washington ever abolished the death penalty? The death penalty has been abolished twice since the early 1900s. The state abolished it in 1913 before reinstating it in 1919, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Washington abolished it again in 1975, but it was reinstated later that year through a citizen initiative. The initiative made it a mandatory penalty for aggravated murder in the first degree, but the Washington Supreme Court found that law unconstitutional. The current death penalty law was passed in 1981. When did the moratorium on the death penalty go into effect? Gov. Jay Inslee issued a moratorium on the death penalty in 2014. Inslee, who once supported the death penalty, said at the time that it was inconsistent and unequal.<doc-sep>Washington became the 20th state to do away with the death penalty on Thursday when the state's Supreme Court ruled that the way the punishment is carried out violates the state constitution. The court ruled that the death penalty is applied unequally, depending on where the crime took place, the race of the defendant and the budget available to county prosecutors at any given time. "The death penalty, as administered in our state, fails to serve any legitimate penological goal," the court said. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, praised the decision. "This is a hugely important moment in our pursuit for equal and fair application of justice," he said. Inslee imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2014, concluding that it was not uniformly applied and was unnecessary given the option of seeking a life sentence without parole. The ruling Thursday came in the case of Allen Eugene Gregory, who was convicted of raping and murdering a woman, Geneine Harshfield, 46, in 1996. The court did not overturn Gregory's murder conviction, but converted his death sentence and those of seven others on Washington's death row to life sentences. Washington has carried out five executions since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty nationwide, then allowed states to reimpose it under revised trial procedures. After peaking in 1999, the number of executions carried out nationwide has steadily dropped, partly as a result of the concern about wrongful convictions prompted by the progress in using DNA evidence. Executions and the imposition of new death sentences remained near historically low levels in 2017, and public support for the death penalty fell to its lowest point in 45 years. The ACLU had urged the Washington court to strike down capital punishment. "There is nothing unique about the role racism played in Washington's death penalty," said Jeff Robinson, an ACLU attorney. "What is rare is the Supreme Court's willingness to call out the truth that has always been there."<doc-sep>The Supreme Court of the state of Washington has ruled that the death penalty violates the state’s constitution. With today's decision, Washington becomes the 20th state to abolish capital punishment, and the eighth in the last 11 years. Three other states have governor-imposed moratoria in carrying out executions —- all also issued in the last decade. Thirty states and the federal government provide for the imposition of death as a sentence for some homicides. The case was brought by Allen Gregory, sentenced to death for the 1996 rape and murder of 43-year-old Geneine Harshfield in her home in Tacoma. There is no doubt of Allen’s guilt, or of the horrific brutality of his crime. What the Washington court focused on is what many states have come to see —- the death penalty is administered so arbitrarily, and is laced with so much conscious and unconscious racial bias, that it cannot be seen as a just or even lawful act by the state. The key evidence for that fact was an exhaustive study by statisticians at the University of Washington of how the death penalty actually works in that state —- when prosecutors seek it, when juries impose it, who eventually gets the needle. The death penalty is invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner. The study found that black defendants were four-and-a-half times more likely to be sentenced to death than similarly-situated white defendants. Interestingly, prosecutors’ choices to seek the death penalty showed no signs of racial bias. It was the juries who introduced conscious/unconscious racism into their decisions. "We don't know what Allen Gregory's jury was thinking," said Lila Silverstein of the Washington Appellate Project, one of Gregory's attorneys. "But what we do know based on this study is that had Allen Gregory not been black, his chances of being sentenced to death would have been notably lower.” The state supreme court agreed, and went farther: “The death penalty is invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner," the decision reads. "While this particular case provides an opportunity to specifically address racial disproportionality, the underlying issues that underpin our holding are rooted in the arbitrary manner in which the death penalty is generally administered." As noted by appellant," the decision continues, "the use of 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." "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.” With the Supreme Court of the United States now firmly in conservative hands for many years, state courts and legislatures are the only battleground over the future of the death penalty in America.<doc-sep>
Washington state's death penalty is unconstitutional, the state's supreme court ruled unanimously on Thursday, with justices citing concerns about racial bias and the arbitrary imposition of the penalty. "The death penalty, as administered in our state, fails to serve any legitimate penological goal," Washington Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst wrote. As such, she continued, it violated the state's constitution. The eight inmates currently on death row in the state will have their sentences converted to life imprisonment, the court ruled. Washington is the 20th state, along with the District of Columbia, to have no death penalty law. Even among states with the death penalty, however, its use is down — both in terms of new death sentences and executions. Three of the six states with the largest death-row populations — California, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina — have not carried out an execution in more than a decade. Given the current makeup of the Supreme Court — specifically, Justice Anthony Kennedy's departure from the court — it is likely that advocates to end the death penalty increasingly will turn to state courts, as well as governors and legislatures, to seek decreased use of the death penalty across the country. In addressing the arguments advanced by Allen Eugene Gregory — sentenced to death for a 1996 rape, robbery, and murder of a woman in her home — the Washington Supreme Court looked at the expert report commissioned by Gregory looking at "the effect of race and county on the imposition of the death penalty." Among the report's conclusions was one that "black defendants were four and a half times more likely to be sentenced to death than similarly situated white defendants." Considering the report and other evidence, Fairhurst concluded, "[W]e are confident that the association between race and the death penalty is not attributed to random chance." Among the other evidence cited by Fairhurst was the state's "case law and history of racial discrimination," including cases in which prosecutors made racist statements and took "inflammatory, racially charged" actions in court. Although Fairhurst's opinion was treated as the main opinion for the case, a majority of the nine-justice court did not sign on to all of the reasons she gave for reaching the decision. One of the four justices to join Fairhurst's decision, Justice Steven Gonzalez, noted that he concurred "in result only." A second opinion, by Associate Chief Justice Charles Johnson, was joined by the three remaining justices. In it, he wrote, "While I generally concur with the majority's conclusions and its holding invalidating the death penalty, additional state constitutional principles compel this result." Johnson wrote that the report's conclusions about racial bias "raise significant concerns" — but he went on to say that "other additional constitutional factors have become more apparent, supporting the conclusion that the death penalty, as administered, is unconstitutional." Specifically, Johnson later wrote, "Based on a current review of the administration and processing of capital cases in this state, what is proved is obvious. A death sentence has become more randomly and arbitrarily sought and imposed, and fraught with uncertainty and unreliability, and it fails state constitutional examination." His opinion focused on the fact that "[t]he death penalty simply does not exist as an option in the majority of the state's counties," noting that there are "at most, three" counties in the state where a death penalty prosecution "is an option," as well as the significant delays "inherent in death sentence cases." Because the ruling is based on the state high court's interpretation of the state's constitution — a point made in both opinions in the case — it cannot be appealed to the US Supreme Court. The court did not rule that the death penalty is always unconstitutional, but instead that Washington's law, established by looking at the way that it is implemented, is unconstitutional. "We leave open the possibility that the legislature may enact a 'carefully drafted statute,'" Fairhurst wrote, quoting from the US Supreme Court's opinion upholding some states' death penalty statutes after the court had earlier, in effect, created a national moratorium on the death penalty in the 1970s, "to impose capital punishment in this state, but it cannot create a system that offends constitutional rights."