VICTORY! Delaware Supreme Court declares state’s death penalty law unconstitutional

A sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ry for human rights has been won today:

The Delaware Supreme Court has ruled the state’s death penal­ty law is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al – and the only chance at fix­ing it is to punt the issue to the already-divid­ed Gen­er­al Assembly.

The top court released its rul­ing Tues­day that said Delaware’s cur­rent cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute vio­lates the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion by giv­ing judges, and not juries, the final say to impose a death sentence.

The opin­ion is avail­able online here (PDF).

The Court’s rul­ing will have the effect of pre­vent­ing any more peo­ple from being sen­tenced to death in Delaware, the nation’s first state.

The right wing will undoubt­ed­ly try to get this rul­ing over­turned, but that will be dif­fi­cult for them, because a major­i­ty in Delaware’s state Sen­ate sup­port abo­li­tion — as does Gov­er­nor Jack Markell, who had praise for today’s decision.

“I applaud the Supreme Court’s find­ing that the state’s death penal­ty law is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al,” Markell said in a statement.

“As I have come to see after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is an instru­ment of imper­fect jus­tice that doesn’t make us any safer.”

“We have been watch­ing legal devel­op­ments and sup­port­ing orga­niz­ing efforts in Delaware and are so pleased to add anoth­er state to the death-penal­ty-free col­umn,” said Zach Ever­son in a state­ment to sup­port­ers of the Nation­al Coali­tion to Abol­ish the Death Penal­ty (NCADP).

“Momen­tum con­tin­ues to build against the death penal­ty, and Delaware today has joined a grow­ing major­i­ty on the right side of his­to­ry,” said James Clark, senior death penal­ty cam­paign­er at Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al USA.

“Today more than half of U.S. states do not car­ry out exe­cu­tions. Those few that con­tin­ue must end this failed sys­tem and abol­ish this cru­el, inhu­man and degrad­ing pun­ish­ment once and for all.”

We com­mend Delaware’s Supreme Court for its deci­sion today.

Every time a state does away with the bar­bar­ic prac­tice of exe­cu­tions, our coun­try stands taller. We can­not be a human rights cham­pi­on around the world when we are putting peo­ple to death here at home. Regret­tably, the laws of the Pacif­ic North­west still allow peo­ple to be put to death. In Wash­ing­ton, in Ore­gon, in Ida­ho, we need to change our laws so that abo­li­tion becomes a real­i­ty. If Nebras­ka can do it, if New Mex­i­co can do it, if Delaware can do it, then we can do it, too.