A District Federal Court Judge in California ruled today that California’s death penalty is unconstitutional, stating that it is “arbitrary and plagued with delay.”
The 29-page decision, which is linked in its entirety below, outlines how the death penalty is used in California. Essentially, people are sentenced to death for heinous crimes, and then spend their life in jail, since California hasn’t executed a person since 2006. In fact, as the opinion points out, more people have died of natural causes, suicide, or by violence from another inmate, accident, or a guard, than have died as a result of the sentence which was judicially imposed.
The problem here is not that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, as was addressed on the David Dorer Show earlier this year, but rather that the intention of legislators and jurors is not administratively accomplished. That is to say, as the opinion so eloquently puts it, that those people convicted of crimes are being administratively sentenced to “life in prison, with the possibility of death.”
The procedures for the administrative implementation of the death penalty contain delays that are truly the result of the State’s failure to follow through on its own initiatives. An inmate has Constitutional rights, and if a State is going to stoop to the level of “eye-for-an-eye” justice, it must still preserve the rights of the convicted, lest we become Hammurabi savages.
It takes years to start the initial review process, years to handle the collateral review process, years to handle the Federal review process, and all are required to preserve the due process rights of the inmate under Furman v. Georgia. The State lulls these constitutional rights, dawdles in the administration of justice, all to avoid accountability for taking a person’s life.
It may be painful to be executed, it may be painful to be in prison, but nothing can be more painful than being in prison and having no idea how long you have to wait until you’re executed. I will say this: if executions are botched, due process is slow, and the entire endeavor costs the State and the taxpayer so much, why not retire a Bronze Age penalty for something more representative of our cultural and moral superiority?
Follow me at @DavidTDorer, listen to the David Dorer Show and Talking Law
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