Oregon
death penalty foes found a lot to like in a federal court decision
handed down this week in California.
U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney vacated the death sentence of Ernest Dewayne Jones, condemned to death on April 7, 1995, ruling that capital
punishment in California violates the constitutional right of prisoners not to
be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.
Carney's Wednesday ruling noted that more than 900 prisoners have been
sentenced to die in California since 1978, but only 13 have been executed.
"For the rest," Carney wrote, "the dysfunctional administration of California's
death penalty system has resulted, and will continue to result, in an
inordinate and unpredictable period of delay preceding their actual execution.
Indeed, for most, systemic delay has made their execution so unlikely that the
death sentence carefully and deliberately imposed by the jury has been
transformed into one no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in
prison, with the remote possibility of death."
Jeff Ellis, a criminal defense attorney on the board of Oregonians for
Alternatives to the Death Penalty, boiled the order down in a dozen words:
"California has nothing on Oregon. Our death penalty system is even worse."
Ellis noted that Oregon has executed just 2 men - both volunteers, both
executed in the late 1990s after waiving their appeals - since the latest
incarnation of capital punishment was passed into state law.
"Of the individuals currently under a death sentence in Oregon, 8 have been on
death row for over 25 years," Ellis wrote. "The last person to die on death row
was Gary Zweigert in 2013. He died of natural causes.
"In reality, Oregon pays for the most expensive version of life in prison
imaginable. It is the opposite of being smart on crime."
Death penalty advocates also find fault in Oregon's law, blaming sloth by the
state Supreme Court and Gov. John Kitzhaber's moratorium on capital punishment
for the delays.
No matter where you stand on capital punishment, it will be interesting to see
if judges in the U.S. District of Oregon find themselves poring through the
appeals of prisoners arguing the Eighth Amendment points raised by Ernest
Dewayne Jones.
Source: The Oregonian, July 19, 2014
