State v. Gregory
State
Washington
Court
Washington Supreme Court
Citation and Year
427 P.3d 621 (2018)
Constitutional Provision or State Statute
Washington Constitution Article I, Section 14 (“Excessive bail shall not be required, excessive fines imposed, nor cruel punishment inflicted.”)
Nature of Case
In 2001, a jury convicted Allen Gregory of aggravated first degree murder and sentenced him to death. The Washington Supreme Court later remanded Gregory’s case for resentencing, and the new jury again sentenced Gregory to death. On appeal, Gregory presented a statistical study showing the effects of race and geography within the state on the imposition of the death penalty, and argued that the systemic influence of such factors rendered Washington’s death penalty “cruel” punishment under the state constitution.
Holding
Washington’s death penalty violated “evolving standards of decency” and failed to promote any legitimate penological purpose because it was administered in an arbitrary and racially biased manner. It therefore violated the Washington constitution’s cruel punishments clause.
Analysis
Writing for the court, Chief Justice Fairhurst explained that “the state constitution, like the Eighth Amendment, proscribes disproportionate sentencing in addition to certain modes of punishment.” Gregory’s statistical analysis revealed Washington’s death penalty to be “unequally applied—sometimes by where the crime took place, or the county of residence, or the available budgetary resources at any given point in time, or the race of the defendant.” The study showed there was “no meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which [the death penalty] is imposed from the many cases in which it is not,” wrote Fairhurst, citing Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). “To the extent that race distinguishes the cases, it is clearly impermissible and unconstitutional.”
The state’s cruel punishment clause offers broader protection than the Eighth Amendment, Fairhurst wrote, noting that especially where the language of the state constitution differed from the federal analog (here, “cruel” punishment vs. “cruel and unusual” punishment), the court did not have to assume the framers intended an identical interpretation.
Fairhurst also invoked the principle of “evolving standards of decency” applied under both the state and federal constitutions, but suggested the state’s standards may evolve separately from federal trends. Specifically, Fairhurst concluded that the state constitution offered stronger protection against arbitrary punishment. Washington’s death penalty was unconstitutional under Article I, Sec. 14 because its unequal application did not meet the higher standard of fundamental fairness in the cruel punishment clause: “When the death penalty is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner, society’s standards of decency are even more offended. Our capital punishment law lacks ‘fundamental fairness’ and thus violates article I, section 14.”
Moreover, the Court found that the death penalty was an ineffective punishment: “Given our conclusion that the death penalty is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner, it logically follows that the death penalty fails to serve penological goals. The principal purposes of capital punishment are retribution and deterrence of capital crimes by prospective offenders. Unless the death penalty measurably contributes to one or both of these goals, it is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering, and hence an unconstitutional punishment.”
Finally, Fairhurst explained that prior decisions upholding the death penalty in similar claims did not preclude Gregory’s claim. Like the Eighth Amendment, Article I, Sec. 14 “is not static” and prior interpretations may be revisited in light of new evidence. “Stability should not be confused with perpetuity, and major changes have taken place . . . that support our decision to revisit the constitutionality of the death penalty.”