17 January 2017 :

Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday announced a proposal to abolish the death penalty in Washington state. With a bipartisan faction behind them, Inslee and Ferguson used Martin Luther King Jr. Day to announce their initiative. Inslee imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in February 2014, but repeal bills introduced since that time have stalled in the Legislature. Ferguson said that he hoped with the attorney general's office officially requesting legislation, it would help elevate the conversation among lawmakers. Inslee and Ferguson were joined by former Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna, Republican Sens. Maureen Walsh and Mark Miloscia and Democratic Sens. Jamie Pedersen and Reuven Carlyle and Rep. Tina Orwall, also a Democrat. Republicans hold a slight majority in the Senate and Democrats hold a slight majority in the House. "This issue transcends politics," Ferguson said. The proposed bills, sponsored by Miloscia in the Senate and Orwall in the House, would remove capital punishment as a sentencing option for aggravated murder and mandates instead a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. The law, however, would not be retroactive, meaning the sentences of the eight inmates now on death row would not change. There have been 78 inmates, all men, put to death in Washington state since 1904. The last execution in the state came in September 2010, when Cal Coburn Brown died by lethal injection.