Court Opinion

ID: 9543980
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:51:03.950677+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:11:40.654518
License: Public Domain

Dolliver, J.
(specially concurring) — The people of the state of Washington have expressed their will by enacting the death penalty, and my duty as a justice of this court is to uphold that law. However, I agree with the words quoted by Justice Blackmun in his dissent to Callins v. Collins, 510 U.S. 1141, 127 L. Ed. 2d 435, 114 S. Ct. 1127 (1994) that " '. . . the infliction of [death] is so plainly doomed to failure that it — and the death penalty — must be abandoned altogether.’ ” Callins, 114 S. Ct. at 1138 (Blackmun, J., dissenting) (quoting Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 442, 64 L. Ed. 2d 398, 100 S. Ct. 1759 (1980) (Marshall, J., concurring in the judgment)).
*217Although I do not question my duty, I write this separate concurrence to state my objection to the death penalty in principle and to express the hope that some day we will eliminate the death penalty and be saved from cries of vengeance, revenge, or "justice” and thus become a more truly civilized community of citizens.
Until that point arrives, if the laws are both constitutional and exactly followed, as was the case here, the ultimate penalty must be enforced. I also do not question that whether one agrees, as I firmly do, with the majority’s rule for determining proportionality or one adopts the test in State v. Lord, 117 Wn.2d 829, 822 P.2d 177 (1991), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 856, 121 L. Ed. 2d 112, 113 S. Ct. 164 (1992), as proposed in Chief Justice Durham’s concurrence, the result in this case is the same: the imposition of the death penalty for this brutal crime is not disproportionate under the law.
Smith, J., concurs with Dolliver, J.