The hearing also comes as California begins resuming executions this fall, introducing a new single-drug lethal injection procedure. The state had issued a defacto suspension of executions since 2006, joining many states’ concerns over the effectiveness and pain level of the established injection substances. It also comes just weeks after Connecticut’s Supreme Court commuted all of its condemned prisoners’ death sentences to life without parole. Voters in that state abolished the death penalty in 2012; however the law that was adopted only abolished it for future crimes, not for those already sentenced.
California’s embattled death penalty system will be the subject of Monday’s oral arguments in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, as the court revisits a 2014 federal ruling calling the system “dysfunctional.” The main question that will be debated by the court is whether or not California’s death penalty system is so arbitrary and dragged-out that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The case involves a ruling made last year in California federal court involving the appeal of Earnest Dewayne Jones, who was sentenced to death row after being convicted of murder and rape in 1995. Jones exhausted his state-level appeals and instead filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court in Santa Ana. On July 16, 2014, Judge Cormac J. Carney surprised many by ruling that California’s death penalty was unconstitutional. California voters had upheld the death penalty in the state by a 52-48 margin in 2012.
Carney noted that only 13 of the over 900 people sentenced to death in California since 1978 have actually been executed. In his opinion, the judge wrote that the death sentence actually means “life in prison, with the remote possibility of death.” Although the state’s Attorney General Kamala Harris has mixed feelings towards the death penalty, she appealed last year’s ruling, calling it “misguided,” and asserted that California’s lengthy appeals process ensures the fair administration of justice. Over 40 percent of the state’s death row inmates have remained there for over 20 years. Carney believes that the lengthy process violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, while no longer serving as viable retribution for families of the victims, nor serves as a deterrent. Carney wrote that the few who are actually executed “will have languished for so long on death row that their execution will serve no retributive or deterrent purpose and will be arbitrary.”
The hearing also comes as California begins resuming executions this fall, introducing a new single-drug lethal injection procedure. The state had issued a defacto suspension of executions since 2006, joining many states’ concerns over the effectiveness and pain level of the established injection substances. It also comes just weeks after Connecticut’s Supreme Court commuted all of its condemned prisoners’ death sentences to life without parole. Voters in that state abolished the death penalty in 2012; however the law that was adopted only abolished it for future crimes, not for those already sentenced. In May, Nebraska lawmakers also abolished the death penalty in their state. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer also announced their belief that the death penalty was unconstitutional in their opinion within June’s Glossip v. Gross ruling. The Justices urged the rest of the Court to conduct a full briefing on the matter. Ohio State University law professor and owner of the Sentencing Law and Policy blog Douglas Berman believes that if the ruling becomes a constitutional block to California’s death penalty, “it’s an absolute certainty the Supreme Court takes it up.”
Sources:
National Law Journal – Marcia Croyle
New York Times – Eric Eckholm
San Jose Mercury News – Howard Mintz
Join the conversation!