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Biden Commuted Their Death Sentences. Now What?

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As three men challenge their commutations, others brace for imminent prison transfers and the finality of a life sentence with no chance of release. In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like heā€™d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was ā€œa man on a mission,ā€ he told me in an email on Christmas Day. ā€œI will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.ā€

Washington pauses to reflect on death penalty

Washington State Death Chamber
Though capital punishment has always been a part of the United Statesā€™ history, its use was suspended from 1972 to 1976, when the Supreme Court found the death penalty was bordering on unconstitutional and qualified as cruel and unusual punishment.

By 1977 capital punishment was slowly being reintroduced by the majority of U.S. states ā€” including Washington, which revised its statute in 1981 so only aggravated, first-degree murder convictions could qualify for the death penalty. Washington has executed five people since. 

Mark Larranaga, a Seattle private practice attorney and former director of Washingtonā€™s Death Penalty Assistance Center, said thatā€™s reason enough to re-examine the stateā€™s policy.

ā€œThe reality is, in 40 years we have executed five people, three voluntary ā€” they waived their appeals,ā€ he said. ā€œForty years is a pretty good chunk of history to do an assessment.ā€

Larranaga also served on the stateā€™s 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.)

ā€œHistory has told us, in four decades of trying to administer Washingtonā€™s death penalty, itā€™s undeniable that we are spending millions and millions and millions of dollars on a product that fails miserably,ā€ he said. ā€œThe system ā€” and what itā€™s 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 ā€œextraordinary 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

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