LANDMARK VICTORY: Washington State Senate votes to abolish the death penalty!

This may be the great­est tri­umph yet of the 2018 leg­isla­tive session.

In a land­mark vic­to­ry for human rights and dig­ni­ty, the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate made his­to­ry today by approv­ing leg­is­la­tion that would abol­ish the death penal­ty, end­ing the bar­bar­ic prac­tice of exe­cut­ing peo­ple as a pun­ish­ment for crimes.

Sen­ate Bill 6052, prime spon­sored by Repub­li­can Mau­reen Walsh and request­ed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, passed with the sup­port of twen­ty-one Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors and four Repub­li­can senators.

In a state­ment, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee praised the Sen­ate for approv­ing SB 6052.

“I would like to thank Sens. Mau­reen Walsh and Reuven Car­lyle, and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, who have been great allies in the fight to end the death penal­ty in Wash­ing­ton state. There has been grow­ing, bipar­ti­san sup­port for end­ing Washington’s death penal­ty, and the Sen­ate today vot­ed to do just that. I know this is an emo­tion­al issue and peo­ple are moved by deeply-held beliefs and val­ues.

“When I put a mora­to­ri­um on the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 2014, I hoped it would cre­ate space for a dis­cus­sion about the unequal appli­ca­tion of this law, the enor­mous costs of seek­ing this pun­ish­ment and the uncer­tain­ty of clo­sure for vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. I hope Wash­ing­ton joins the grow­ing num­ber of states that are choos­ing to end the death penalty.”

“Today the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate took a his­toric, bipar­ti­san vote, pass­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al-request leg­is­la­tion to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty and replace it with life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole,” said Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son. “Thank you to leg­isla­tive lead­ers and advo­cates who worked so hard to make this his­toric vote hap­pen. There’s more work to do — Speak­er Chopp and the state House now have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to abol­ish our bro­ken death penalty.”

“In the past year, promi­nent Repub­li­can offi­cials came for­ward to sup­port abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty — for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob McKen­na and King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Dan Sat­ter­berg,” Fer­gu­son added. “I want to thank them for con­tribut­ing their per­spec­tive to this debate.”

“For me, there are many com­pelling rea­son why Wash­ing­ton should join the nine­teen oth­er states that have elim­i­nat­ed the death penal­ty,” said Sen­a­tor Jamie Ped­er­sen (D‑43rd Dis­trict), the chair of the Sen­ate Law & Jus­tice Committee.

Ped­er­sen, who has cham­pi­oned abo­li­tion on both sides of the dome, went on to explain that the death penal­ty is inde­fen­si­ble. “It is unfair­ly admin­is­tered; expen­sive; and unavail­able in wide swaths of our state,” he said. “Those con­vict­ed of aggra­vat­ed first-degree mur­der should die in prison with no hope of parole. The tax­pay­ers do not need to spend mil­lions of dol­lars to has­ten that death.”

“This is a dif­fi­cult and seri­ous pub­lic issue, and a per­son­al deci­sion for each leg­is­la­tor,” said Sen­a­tor Reuven Car­lyle, D‑36th District.

“And in this dis­cus­sion, we offer no per­son­al judg­ments, no moral crit­i­cism and no right­eous­ness against those with whom we disagree.”

“But my per­son­al reli­gious con­vic­tion leaves me unable to sup­port a pol­i­cy that is clear­ly applied inequitably across our nation and that I believe does not rep­re­sent our best val­ues of grace. For nine years as a leg­is­la­tor I have led efforts to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty in favor of life in prison.”

“Today’s vote rep­re­sents an evo­lu­tion in think­ing about the death penal­ty and I am grate­ful that we are mak­ing mean­ing­ful progress toward that goal.”

The roll call on SB 6052 was as follows:

Roll Call
SB 6052
Death penal­ty elimination
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
2/14/2018

Yeas: 26; Nays: 22; Excused: 1

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Car­lyle, Chase, Cleve­land, Darneille, Dhin­gra, Fain, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hawkins, Hunt, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, McCoy, Milos­cia, Mul­let, Nel­son, Palum­bo, Ped­er­sen, Ranker, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Walsh, War­nick, Wellman

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Angel, Bai­ley, Beck­er, Braun, Brown, Con­way, Erick­sen, For­tu­na­to, Hobbs, Hon­ey­ford, King, O‘Ban, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Shel­don, Short, Takko, Van De Wege, Wag­oner, Wil­son, Zeiger

Excused: Sen­a­tor Baumgartner

The team at NPI is over­joyed by the pas­sage of Sen­ate Bill 6052.

With today’s vote, our Sen­ate has loud­ly declared that human rights mat­ter in Wash­ing­ton State. We thank each and every sen­a­tor who vot­ed for abo­li­tion. We are par­tic­u­lar­ly grate­ful to Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Brad Hawkins, Joe Fain, Mark Milos­cia, Mau­reen Walsh, and Judy War­nick for their aye votes.

With­out them, this bill would not have passed.