First a Superbowl, Now Suspended Executions, Washington State's Having a Great Year RT.com
go to original February 12, 2014

Governor Jay Inslee expects Washington State will join a growing national conversation about capital punishment. (Northwest Leaf)

Washington state governor Jay Inslee has announced that all death penalty executions in the northwestern state will be suspended, a move Inslee hopes will fuel the debate about capital punishment’s place in US society.

Inslee, a Democrat elected as governor in 2012, said at a news conference Tuesday that he had spent months speaking with prosecutors, law enforcement officials, and family members of the people victimized by those on death row. The ultimate result, he said, is that the death penalty is imposed in unequal and inconsistent situations.

“There have been too many doubts raised about capital punishment, there are too many flaws in this system today,” he said, as quoted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “There is too much at stake to accept an imperfect system…Equal justice under the law is the state’s primary responsibility. I’m not convinced equal justice is being served.”

Inslee said that for as long as he is in office, if a death penalty case comes to his desk he will issue a reprieve, which neither pardons an inmate nor commutes their sentence into a lesser punishment.

“During my term, we will not be executing people. Nobody is getting out of prison, period,” he said.

Read the rest at RT.com

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