DOVER – The House passed legislation Tuesday that would effectively abolish the death penalty in Delaware.
House Bill 70, sponsored by Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker, Rep. Sean Lynn, and Sen. Kyle Evans Gay, would eliminate the death penalty and instruct that any adult convicted of first–degree murder to instead be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of probation, parole, or any other sentence reduction.
“The death penalty is cruel and unjust. Over the last few years, my colleagues and I have worked tirelessly to create a more fair and logical criminal justice system in Delaware,” said Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker.
“The death penalty has disproportionately affected communities of color, with Blacks and Hispanics making up over 50 percent of inmates on death row. Having served as the spokeswoman for Delaware Repeal, the entity working to abolish the death penalty in the First State, I do not believe we should be in the business of state-sanctioned murder. Today, we are closer to a more perfect union. I would like to extend a special thank you to Rep. Sean Lynn, Sen. Karen Peterson and all of the advocates who have fought for decades to end the death penalty. I am grateful to my colleagues in the House for passing this bill with overwhelming support.”
According to the National Death Penalty Information Center, around 2,400 prisoners currently face execution in the United States.
“Our State has a long and shameful history surrounding the death penalty,” said Rep. Sean Lynn.
“Between 1972 and 1976, the Supreme Court Delaware’s capital sentencing procedure was found to be in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment twice. Nine individuals were sentenced to death in that time frame. For decades we have continued to back the wrong horse in our choices around capital punishment. It’s time that we bring this deplorable chapter to a close.”
Delaware’s current capital punishment law was enacted in 2002. It holds that in order for a defendant to be eligible for the death penalty, a jury must unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt find at least one statutory aggravating circumstance.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Hurst v. Florida led to the Delaware Supreme Court on August 2nd, 2016, declaring the State’s capital sentencing procedures unconstitutional, leaving Delaware without a valid death penalty statute.
Despite the death penalty not being actively used as a form of punishment in the state since 2016, Delaware still has the 4th highest cumulative per capita execution rate in the United States, a country that in 2023 had the 3rd highest number of executions in the world.
“As the prime Senate sponsor of this legislation introduced in January 2023, I have remained firm in my position that Delaware’s death penalty is unjust, unconstitutional and ineffective,” said Sen. Kyle Evans Gay, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“The Delaware Supreme Court has twice nullified the death penalty, most recently in 2016 just a few years after our state dismantled the gallows where the last public hanging was held during my lifetime,” she said. “It’s well-past time to move past this practice once and for all, and instead focus our resources on addressing the root causes of crime. If we do not act on this legislation, we continue to risk revisiting a flawed and biased tool that has never once been shown to make Delawareans safer.”
Since 1973, at least 197 people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated.
House Bill 70 now moves to the Senate for consideration
