California NAACP Applauds California Federal Judge Cormac Carney’s Historic Decision That California’s Long Death Row Delays Are Cruel and Unusual Punishment

(SACRAMENTO) – CA State NAACP President Alice A. Huffman applauds the decision of Federal Judge Cormac decision banning the Death Penalty which is cruel and unusual punishment. “The NAACP has a strong adverse opinion of the Death Penalty in general, particularly in cases of botched executions stemming from a shortage of lethal injection drugs; the death penalty system’s racial disparities; and death row inmates later found to be innocent’, said Ms. Huffman.

Today’s ruling was on the petition of Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was sentenced to death in 1995 for raping and killing his girlfriend’s mother. Judge Cormac Carney said the amount of time it has taken for his case to process through California’s death penalty system violates the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Furthermore, he said, the state’s long delays on death row cases undermine the arguments for capital punishment.

“As for the random few for whom execution does become a reality, they will have languished for so long on death row that their execution will serve no retributive or deterrent purpose and will be arbitrary,” Judge Carney wrote in his opinion.

Despite having the largest number of inmates on death row, no one has been executed in California since 2006.

Since 1978, when California voters legalized capital punishment, California has sentenced more than 900 people to death, but only 13 have been executed, while 748 are still on death row. (The rest have either died of other causes or have had their sentences overturned.)

The NAACP believes that the delays should count as cruel and unusual punishment.

“There really is a need for California to consider getting rid of the death penalty’, said Ms. Huffman. “The findings depicts a disparity in the implementation of the death penalty in California – out of the 748 inmates on death row over 36% (271) are African American and less than 35% are white (259).’ “We believe that today’s court ruling should cause policy makers to rethink their stand on the death penalty and to take a look at a failed criminal justice system.”

Founded in 1909, the NAACP – the nation’s oldest, largest and most widely-recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization – is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors

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