Skip Oliva on Endless Delays as Reason to Abolish the Death Penalty

The July 16 decision by U.S. District Judge
Cormac J. Carney declaring California’s death penalty
unconstitutional offered a stark assessment of the Golden State’s
dysfunctional capital punishment system. Judge Carney noted only 13
of the more than 900 people sentenced to death since 1978 have
actually been executed—primarily because the average appeals
process in a capital case takes “25 years or more” to complete.

Judge Carney acknowledged “courts had thus far generally not
accepted the theory that extraordinary delay between sentencing and
execution violates the Eighth Amendment,” which prohibits “cruel
and unusual” punishment. But in accepting that theory now, writes
Skip Oliva, Judge Carney joined a substantial body of death penalty
jurisprudence from the British Commonwealth.

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