Inordinate and unpredictable delay has resulted in a death penalty system in which very few of the hundreds of individuals sentenced to death have been, or even will be, executed by the State. It 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.

A spokesperson for California Attorney General Kamala Harris said her office is reviewing the decision, which could be appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Use of the death penalty has been a controversial issue throughout the US and internationally. In May the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) urged the US to impose a moratorium on the use of the death penalty following a botched execution performed in Oklahoma the previous week. In April the Supreme Court of Oklahoma ruled that inmates' constitutional rights were not violated by keeping the sources of lethal injection drugs secret. Earlier that month a judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Missouri allowed the continuation of a lawsuit challenging a bill that would conceal the identities of individuals involved in the administration of the death penalty. A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma issued a temporary restraining order in February, enjoining a pharmacy from providing a lethal injection drug to the Missouri Department of Corrections. In June 2013 North Carolina repealed a law allowing minority inmates on death row to seek a reduced sentence.

(Published by Jurist – July 16, 2014)