State Attorney General Bob Ferguson issued the following statement Tuesday regarding Gov. Jay Inslee\u2019s announcement that he is implementing a moratorium on all executions as long as he serves as governor.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWashington\u2019s Constitution and state statutes grant the governor significant powers over the fate of individuals sentenced to death,\u201d Ferguson said in a media release. \u201cConsequently, the governor has the authority to hit the ‘pause’ button for executions in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Article III, Section 9 of the Washington Constitution and RCW 10.01.120 grant the governor authority to issue reprieves \u2014 or stays of execution \u2014 as he announced he intended to do.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Washington has nine death row inmates. All nine are challenging their convictions in state or federal court. The Attorney General\u2019s Office is handling the four cases currently in federal court.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Office of Attorney General represents the state of Washington when death row inmates file \u201chabeas corpus\u201d petitions\u2014 or challenges to their convictions or sentences\u2014with the federal courts. The Attorney General\u2019s Office also represents the Department of Corrections in state and federal court litigation challenging death row inmates\u2019 conditions of confinement and DOC\u2019s execution policies and procedures.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cConsistent with the governor\u2019s announcement, the Office of the Attorney General will continue to defend the state against cases brought by death row inmates challenging their convictions and sentences,\u201d Ferguson said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
State Attorney General Bob Ferguson issued the following statement Tuesday regarding Gov. Jay Inslee\u2019s announcement that he is implementing a moratorium on all executions as long as he serves as governor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":8005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8004"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}