Recent ruling may force prosecutors to take the death penalty off the table entirely.
California hasn’t held an execution since 2006, when a judge ruled that the state’s three-drug lethal injection procedure constituted cruel and unusual punishment. However, individuals continue to be sentenced to death, with no present ability for the sentence to be carried out. Recently, another judge has ruled that this and other flaws in California’s judicial system have resulted in such “inordinate and unpredictable delay” that the entire death penalty system should now be considered unconstitutional.
It’s been clear for some time that California’s death penalty system is broken. According to experts, the three-drug lethal injection method currently on the books as California’s method of choice for executions carries a risk of excruciating pain if administered incorrectly. Considering that the injections are often administered by corrections officers with little or no medical training and the inmate is paralyzed and unable to communicate once the injection series has begun, the temporary moratorium placed on executions in 2006 seems reasonable.
What seems less reasonable is that no progress has been made on either improving the administration procedures for three-drug lethal injection (such as by having a trained medical professional present) or switching to the simpler one-drug injection used in other states. This has indeed created a situation where death row inmates find themselves even more in limbo than before.
California has only executed 13 inmates since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s, but over 900 people have been sentenced to death row. In the recent ruling, the judge pointed to this as key evidence that something is wrong with the system. Instead of the sentence being applied fairly to all death row inmates, only a “random few” end up being executed, largely due to arbitrary bureaucratic factors.
Of course, the federal ruling declaring California’s death penalty unconstitutional is not binding on a state level. But federal rulings can be very influential on state judges. This ruling should give some slight ray of hope to individuals currently charged with offenses eligible for the death penalty. Defense attorneys now have an additional argument to use when attempting to convince the prosecution or the judge to take the death penalty off the table. Hopefully this will help to spare individuals the stress and uncertainty that comes with living under a practically unenforceable death sentence.
If you or a loved one has been accused of a serious crime eligible for the death penalty, it is absolutely critical to secure the assistance of an experienced defense attorney now.
