Court to rule if California death penalty cruel and unusual punishment

A federal appeals court was considering on Monday whether California’s system of carrying out the death penalty violates the U.S. Constitution’s 8th amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment, in a case that may have far-reaching implications for the future of capital punishment in the state.

The appeal stems from U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney's ruling on July 15, in the case of a Los Angeles rapist and murderer, that the state's death penalty was dysfunctional. In his decision, Carney said the state rarely carried out executions, while continuing to convict and sentence people to death.

"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," wrote Carney, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.

There are 749 people on California’s death row, awaiting execution. More than 900 people have been sentenced to death since 1978, but only 13 have been executed.

“In California, execution is the third-leading cause of death on death row,” Frank Zimring, professor of law at University of California at Berkeley, told Al Jazeera. “Natural causes are in first place by a long-shot, and suicide is second.”

Opponents of the death penalty cheered Carney’s ruling, but California Attorney General Kamala Harris appealed. Prosecutors argued in court papers that even if some cases move faster than others, it doesn't create a dysfunctional system resulting in arbitrary executions.  

The hearing at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California, means that if the three-judge panel rules in favor of Jones, over 700 other prisoners on death row could be reprieved. An affirmation could also bolster other states' cases against the death penalty.

The case before Carney’s court involves a 1992 rape and murder committed by Ernest DeWayne Jones, who killed his girlfriend’s mother while he was on parole. Julia Miller's body was found bound and gagged, and she had been stabbed 14 times. Two kitchen knives were sticking out of her neck, and pieces of three other knives were on or around her body; one chest wound had penetrated to her spine. 

Jones, now 51, admitted stabbing Miller, and his DNA connected him to the rape. He was sentenced to death in 1995 and has been in prison on death row for 20 years.

In his appeal, Jones argued that the state didn't provide a fair and timely review of his case, that the delay in California was significantly longer than that in other states and that the conditions on death row in the state constitute torture. He also said the uncertainty of his execution inflicts suffering and, if it ever goes forward, it will serve no legitimate purpose for retribution or deterring other criminals.

No executions have been carried out in California since 2006, when another federal judge ordered an overhaul of the state's procedures for lethal injection.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is drafting new lethal-injection regulations after Gov. Jerry Brown said the state would switch from a three-drug mixture to a single-drug lethal injection. No executions can occur until the new rules are adopted and other legal challenges are resolved.

Several U.S. states are reviewing or have eliminated the death penalty in recent years. The Connecticut Supreme Court recently ruled that this state's death penalty "no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and no longer serves any legitimate penological purpose." Nebraska ended the practice of capital punishment this year. 

A Missouri inmate scheduled to be executed Tuesday for killing a 15-year-old girl has asked the Supreme Court to intervene, calling the death penalty unconstitutional. Roderick Nunley filed an appeal on Monday challenging the state's refusal to disclose who makes its execution drug or how it is tested. That argument has been rejected by the Supreme Court in other death penalty cases. A botched execution in Oklahoma last year sparked controversy and raised concerns over the cocktail of drugs used in lethal injections, but the Supreme Court ruled that there was not enough evidence that the drugs entailed a risk of severe pain.

With wire services