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Washington State Death Chamber
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Mark Larranaga, a Seattle private practice attorney and former
director of Washingtonās Death Penalty Assistance Center, said thatās
reason enough to re-examine the stateās policy.
āThe reality is, in 40 years we have executed five people, three
voluntary ā they waived their appeals,ā he said. āForty years is a
pretty good chunk of history to do an assessment.ā
Larranaga also served on the stateās Death Penalty Subcommittee of the Committee on Public Defense. In its
2006 report,
it found that since 1981, there had been 254 death-eligible cases in
Washington but just four resulted in executions. (One more person has
been executed since the release of that report.)
āHistory has told us, in four decades of trying to administer
Washingtonās death penalty, itās undeniable that we are spending
millions and millions and millions of dollars on a product that fails
miserably,ā he said. āThe system ā and what itās trying to do ā has
failed.ā
Even more, some prosecutors in Washington fear that a capital trial ā
which the committee found to carry an average cost of $470,000 ā
could bankrupt a county.
And though the state has a fund for āextraordinary criminal justice
costs,ā counties that ask for reimbursement from it rarely see more than
a small fraction of their request.
Source: Aljazeera, March 24, 2014