Senate votes to abolish the death penalty in Delaware

Sen. Kyle Evans Gay, D-Talleyville.

legis.delaware.gov

DOVER – The Delaware Senate voted Thursday to remove the death penalty from state law.

House Bill 70, introduced in January 2023, would repeal sections of the Delaware Code that establish the legal procedures for imposing the death penalty as a punishment for premeditated murder.

“This is a statutory repeal of the death penalty. The bill abolishes the death penalty in Delaware by removing all statutory references to the death penalty,” Senator Kyle Evans Gay (D-Talleyville) said on the Senate floor Thursday.

“The penalty for a person convicted of premeditated murder for an offense committed after the person’s 18th birthday is life imprisonment without parole, release on conditional release, or other reduction in sentence,” she added.

Delaware’s current death penalty law is unenforceable.

In 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court overturned the death penalty law and ordered those sentenced to death to be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The passage of House Bill 70 marks another chapter in Delaware’s turbulent history with the death penalty.

Delaware first abolished the death penalty in 1958 before the General Assembly voted to reinstate it three years later. The Delaware Supreme Court struck down the state’s death penalty law in 1973, and the General Assembly passed a new death penalty law the following year.

A bill to abolish the death penalty passed the Delaware Senate for a third time in 2015, but failed in the House of Representatives despite having the support of then-Governor Jack Markell.

The following year, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that the state’s death penalty law again violated the U.S. Constitution because it allows a judge, not a jury, to decide whether prosecutors have proven all the facts necessary to impose a death penalty. Later that year, the Delaware Supreme Court invalidated the death sentences of the remaining 13 death row inmates.

Although Delaware has not imposed the death penalty since 2012, the state still has the fourth highest number of executions per capita over the past 50 years, according to Senator Gay, only Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri still predominate in the state.

“I’m following the data with this bill,” said Senator Gay. “A 2015 poll found that 64% of Delawareans support a life sentence, while only 30% believe the death penalty is the most appropriate punishment for murder.”

Bill 70 passed the Delaware House of Representatives on June 18 by a vote of 33 to 8.

“The death penalty is cruel and unjust. Over the past few years, my colleagues and I have worked tirelessly to create a fairer and more logical criminal justice system in Delaware,” said Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker, the lead sponsor of Bill 70, in a statement released after Thursday’s vote.

“The death penalty has disproportionately affected communities of color, with blacks and Hispanics making up over 50% of inmates on death row. As a spokesperson for Delaware Repeal, the organization that advocates for the abolition of the death penalty in the First State, I do not believe we should be dealing with state-sanctioned murder,” she said.

“Today we are closer to a more perfect union. I would especially like to thank Representative Sean Lynn, Senator Karen Peterson, and all the activists who have fought for decades to abolish the death penalty. I am grateful to my colleagues in the Senate for passing this bill with overwhelming support.”

Although the current law is unenforceable, House Bill 70 sparked an emotional debate over the practice on Thursday. The entire Republican caucus, along with Democratic Sen. Darius Brown of Wilmington, voted against Bill 70.

“This is very personal to me,” said Republican Senator Brian Pettyjohn of Georgetown. “If you walk past my desk, you’ll see two pictures, and they’ve been hanging here since the first day I was elected to the General Assembly. Chad Spicer, his mother and his daughter, who just graduated from high school.”

Patrolman Chad Spicer of the Georgetown Police Department was shot and killed in the line of duty on September 1, 2009.

“I had to be at his funeral. I was on the city council at the time, just elected. His killer had been sentenced to death. The sentence was overturned,” said Senator Pettyjohn. “Every day, Chad’s killer can live his life and know what his family is doing.”

“I would like to see a change in the law to make our death penalty constitutional.”

The debate is probably not over yet, because Bill 301, the first part of a constitutional amendment that would prohibit the reinstatement of the death penalty, is currently before the House of Representatives.

House Bill 70 now goes to Governor John Carney for final approval.