In case of a hung jury during the penalty phase of the trial, a life sentence would be issued, even if a single juror opposed death (there was no retrial).
Following the reintroduction of capital punishment in the late 1970s, inmates were able to choose if their execution will be carried out by lethal injection or hanging.
[10] On September 10, 2010, Washington became the second state, after Ohio, to use a single dose injection of sodium thiopental as opposed to the typical three drug protocol used in most other jurisdictions.
The statute remained unchanged until 1975, when the people adopted a measure providing a mandatory death sentence for aggravated murder, with 69% of voters in favor.
[13] U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280 (1976) and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 325 (1976), 431 U.S. 633 (1977), meant that such a law was unconstitutional and the statute was modified to give detailed procedures for imposing the death penalty.
[16][17][18] On January 16, 2017, Governor Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson introduced legislation to abolish the death penalty in Washington state.
[19] Though the legislation failed to pass, Governor Inslee stated a commitment to ending capital punishment in the future.
[22][23] In State v. Gregory, represented by civil rights attorneys Lila Silverstein and Neil Fox, the court based its conclusions on a regression analysis by University of Washington sociologist Katherine Beckett which had been commissioned by a condemned prisoner.
[2][1] In 2004, the Washington State Bar Association's Council on Public Defense chartered a sub-committee to examine "the practical wisdom of continuing to pursue death penalty prosecutions in light of Washington's experience with sentence reversals, potential benefits to the criminal justice system from cost savings" and other matters.