Valley Oak
07-16-2014, 12:50 PM
Unbelievable! The death penalty in California has been outlawed! Again! It happened before in the 1970s. I am very happy to see this great turn of events.
The death penalty is a truly barbaric and heinous institution and it should have been abolished for the entire country over a century ago. The death penalty is supported only by barbarians.
The following article was published by The Huffington Post on July 16, 2014:
Federal Judge Strikes Down California's Death Penalty
(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/california-death-penalty_n_5592448.html)A federal judge has ruled that California's death penalty system is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney handed down an order (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1219798-carney-order.html) Wednesday, finding that the system is arbitrary and in violation of the Constitution's 8th Amendment.
"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," Carney writes. "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."
Carney continues: "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."
The ruling also vacated petitioner Ernest Dwayne Jones' death sentence. Jones was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1995 (https://articles.latimes.com/1995-04-08/local/me-52200_1_death-sentence).
Capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional (https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/capital_punishment/history_of_capital_punishment.html) by the state's Supreme Court in 1976, but was reinstated by the state legislature the following year. Since then, 13 inmates (https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Capital_Punishment/Inmates_Executed.html)have been executed in California, most recently Clarence Ray Allen (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clarence-allen-76-executed/) in 2006. An analysis by the Los Angeles Times (https://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/20/local/la-me-adv-death-penalty-costs-20110620) found that the state spent $308 million on each execution.
(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/california-death-penalty_n_5592448.html)
The death penalty is a truly barbaric and heinous institution and it should have been abolished for the entire country over a century ago. The death penalty is supported only by barbarians.
The following article was published by The Huffington Post on July 16, 2014:
Federal Judge Strikes Down California's Death Penalty
(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/california-death-penalty_n_5592448.html)A federal judge has ruled that California's death penalty system is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney handed down an order (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1219798-carney-order.html) Wednesday, finding that the system is arbitrary and in violation of the Constitution's 8th Amendment.
"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," Carney writes. "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."
Carney continues: "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."
The ruling also vacated petitioner Ernest Dwayne Jones' death sentence. Jones was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1995 (https://articles.latimes.com/1995-04-08/local/me-52200_1_death-sentence).
Capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional (https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/capital_punishment/history_of_capital_punishment.html) by the state's Supreme Court in 1976, but was reinstated by the state legislature the following year. Since then, 13 inmates (https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Capital_Punishment/Inmates_Executed.html)have been executed in California, most recently Clarence Ray Allen (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clarence-allen-76-executed/) in 2006. An analysis by the Los Angeles Times (https://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/20/local/la-me-adv-death-penalty-costs-20110620) found that the state spent $308 million on each execution.
(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/california-death-penalty_n_5592448.html)