VICTORY! Washington State Senate votes to abolish the death penalty a second time

Wash­ing­ton is on its way to becom­ing the next state to abol­ish the death penalty.

By a vote of twen­ty-eight to nine­teen, the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate today vot­ed to repeal the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al statute that per­mits pros­e­cu­tors to seek death sen­tences for peo­ple who have been con­vict­ed of first degree mur­der. Sen­ate Bill 5339 now heads to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for consideration.

Sup­port for abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty is very high, accord­ing to NPI research. Last year, 69% of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans sur­veyed told our poll­ster that they pre­ferred one of three life in prison alter­na­tives to just 24% who said they pre­ferred the death penal­ty, while 8% said they were not sure. (Read more about our find­ing.)

Sen­ate Bill 5339 would replace the death penal­ty with life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, which is the alter­na­tive endorsed by respon­dents in our poll.

The leg­is­la­tion passed out of the Sen­ate with bipar­ti­san sup­port. Here is the roll call:

Roll Call
SB 5339
Death penal­ty elimination
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
2/15/2019

Yeas: 28; Nays: 19; Excused: 2

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Car­lyle, Cleve­land, Con­way, Darneille, Das, Dhin­gra, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hawkins, Hunt, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, McCoy, Mul­let, Nguyen, Palum­bo, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Walsh, War­nick, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire)

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

Excused: Sen­a­tors For­tu­na­to, Wil­son (Lyn­da)

Three Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors vot­ed against repeal­ing the death penal­ty: Steve Hobbs, Dean Takko, and Kevin Van De Wege. Their no votes were can­celed out by the yes votes of three Repub­li­cans: Mau­reen Walsh, Judy War­nick, and Brad Hawkins.

The Sen­ate’s six new Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers (Mona Das, Liz Lovelett, Joe Nguyen, Emi­ly Ran­dall, Jesse Salomon, Claire Wil­son) all vot­ed in favor of the bill.

“I have the deep­est per­son­al respect for how impor­tant this issue is for vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and I’m so grate­ful for the reflec­tion and grace of the dia­logue in the Leg­is­la­ture,” said Sen­a­tor Reuven Car­lyle, a long­time pro­po­nent of abolition.

“I’m pleased that our state is on the path toward join­ing the glob­al move­ment toward abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty,” Car­lyle con­tin­ued. “Clos­ing the books on this chap­ter in our state’s his­to­ry is a respon­si­ble pub­lic pol­i­cy step, giv­en where the courts and our state have come, and this mea­sure solid­i­fies our statute in a way that makes it clear and unequiv­o­cal for years to come.”

“After work­ing on this issue for so long, I’m pleased and incred­i­bly hum­bled that the state Sen­ate has tak­en this impor­tant step forward.”

So are we. We thank Sen­a­tor Car­lyle and Sen­a­tors Jamie Ped­er­sen and Man­ka Dhin­gra for their lead­er­ship on this human rights breakthrough.

Last year, when the Sen­ate passed this bill for the first time, it was a water­shed moment. Now the focus shifts back to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. For the bill to reach Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk, at least fifty rep­re­sen­ta­tives must vote for it.

We believe the votes exist to pass this bill in the House and we’ll be work­ing along­side fel­low abo­li­tion sup­port­ers to secure a vote and win that vote.