The death penalty has been losing its nationwide support over the past decade and a federal judge added to long list of detractors by striking down California’s execution system down.
The Huffington Post has discovered that U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney has found California’s death penalty to be a direct violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment. This means torture, or otherwise, death sentences.
“California’s death penalty system is so plagued by inordinate and unpredictable delay that the death sentence is actually carried out against only a trivial few of those sentenced to death,” Judge Carney says in a new order. “For all practical purposes then, a sentence of death in California is a sentence of life imprisonment with the remote possibility of death — a sentence no rational legislature or jury could ever impose.”
He also goes on to highlight how all executions aren’t created equal stating, “”Inordinate and unpredictable delay… has resulted in a system in which arbitrary factors, rather than legitimate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the death sentence, determine whether an individual will actually be executed. And it has resulted in a system that serves no penological purpose. Such a system is unconstitutional.”
If the new ruling’s justification behind moral or arbitrary factors isn’t concrete enough, then maybe the economic reasons are. According to the Los Angeles Times, each execution costs the state an unbelievable $308 million.
With this issue possibly in the clear, voters can no focus on the immense head-scratching ‘Six Californias’ issue that is inching its way towards polls.
Hit the next page to read the 26-page order in full.
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Photo: YouTube
