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California Brings Back The Death Penalty

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Casey Harper Contributor
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A federal appeals court overturned a previous ruling that called California’s death penalty unconstitutional. The Thursday decision is bad news for the 747 inmates currently on death row in the state.

California, like most states with the death penalty, experiences years of delays and expensive appeals on their death sentences. More than 900 people have been sentenced to death since the death penalty was put back in place in California in 1978, but only 13 of those actually had their sentence carried out. Almost 100 death row inmates have died for other reasons and some have been there for decades, CNN reports.

Death penalty abolitionists pointed to these long delays as “cruel and unusual punishment” and thus a violation of the eight amendment. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney last year agreed in a ruling that vacated the death sentence of Ernest Jones, a convicted rapist and murderer.

But this new ruling is a big setback for death penalty abolitionists who have been gaining ground in the country. Nebraska’s legislature abolished the death penalty in May but death penalty supporters gathered more than 150,000 signatures which required that the dispute be decided by popular vote at the ballot box in November.

Like California, Nebraska has had serious issues carrying out their executions. In fact, Nebraska hasn’t executed anyone since 1997. This impotence has been a major argument for anti-death penalty activists.

While the California ruling is a setback, the appeals court said they overturned the decision because of technical and procedural issues, not directly deciding on the cruel and unusual question. This leaves the possibility that a later court could still find that the long delays in the system make it a violation of the eighth amendment.

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Tags : california
Casey Harper