California’s Death Penalty Unconstitutional, Says Federal Judge

[Draggingtree]

California’s Death Penalty Unconstitutional, Says Federal Judge

 

Jack Dunphy

July 17, 2014

 

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that California’s death penalty violates the U.S. Constitution. District Court Judge Cormac Carney overturned the death sentence imposed on Ernest Dewayne Jones for the 1992 rape and murder of his girlfriend’s mother, Julia Miller. Noting that out of more than 900 inmates sentenced to death in California since 1978, only 13 have been executed, Carney ruled that the delays and uncertainty attendant to California’s death penalty system amount to a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

 

Note that the ruling rests exclusively on procedural grounds; there is absolutely no doubt as to Jones’s guilt.

http://ricochet.com/californias-death-penalty-unconstitutional-says-federal-judge/