Hanging an option only in Washington
Hanging "is a crude and imprecise practice," he wrote, noting "the only three jurisdictions in the English-speaking world that impose state-sponsored hangings are Washington, Montana and South Africa."
Since then, Montana has made lethal injection its only form of execution, and South Africa has abolished the death penalty. Only Washington allows its condemned inmates to choose between hanging and lethal injection.
Though state lawmakers tried for years to banish hanging, it stayed on the books, largely because of the efforts of unlikely coalitions of death-penalty supporters and opponents.
It's a choice facing James Elledge, who is scheduled to be executed Aug. 28 for murdering a woman in a Lynnwood church three years ago. Elledge has until tomorrow to tell state Department of Corrections officials if he wants to be hanged.
Otherwise, he'll die by lethal injection, the execution method the state uses unless inmates choose hanging, which Elledge is unlikely to do, his lawyer says. Lethal injection is the most widely used method among the 38 states with the death penalty; it also is considered the most humane.
Hanging, once the predominant execution method, was banished by many states by the early part of the 20th century. It is now less common than the gas chamber or electrocution, having been used only three times in the U.S. since capital punishment was restored in 1976. Two of the three times were in Washington state.
The third was in Delaware, which has effectively phased out hanging by allowing it as an option only to inmates sentenced to death before June 13, 1986 — when the state made lethal injection its mode of execution.
"I just thought (hanging) was cruel," said Roger Roy, the Delaware lawmaker who pushed for the legislation. "We were putting away animals easier than we would have been putting away people."
Many critics say hanging is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment. Washington has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending against such claims.
So why does it still allow hanging?
"I think it's just one of those peculiar things," said Speedy Rice, a Gonzaga University law professor and death-penalty foe who is trying to block Elledge's execution.
"Utah has the firing squad; Washington's not that different."
Some have argued that keeping the noose amounts to holding on to a remnant of frontier justice. Hanging has remained legal in Washington largely because of legalities.
In 1994, a federal judge ruled that 410-pound death-row inmate Mitchell Rupe was so heavy he could be decapitated if he were hanged. He could have chosen lethal injection, but Rupe refused.
Last year, in his third sentencing trial, jurors deadlocked on his death sentence, effectively sentencing him to life without parole.
Campbell, the man hanged in Washington seven years ago, appealed his case for years, and his claim that hanging is unconstitutional was barely rejected by a 6-5 majority in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1994. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene, and his execution proceeded.
Though the state was vindicated in the Campbell case, Attorney General Christine Gregoire urged the Legislature to change the law, pointing out that Washington had spent more than $300,000 defending the constitutionality of hanging.
Officials worried, however, that changes to the law could open the door to further appeals. For instance, if hanging were eliminated, they thought, that might give inmates awaiting execution more ammunition to contest their death sentences, based on legal technicalities. So "we tried to make as minimal a change in the state law as possible," said Elaine Rose, a senior assistant attorney general.
The legislation that passed in 1996 merely flip-flopped lethal injection and hanging: The old law stipulated that death-row inmates would be hanged unless they chose lethal injection; the law now says they will receive lethal injection unless they ask for hanging.
Campbell was hanged because he had refused to choose between the two.
Triple-murderer Jeremy Sagastegui, who was executed in 1998, was the first state inmate to die by lethal injection.
In this method, the inmate is injected with a substance that brings near unconsciousness before drugs paralyze the muscles and stop the heart.
Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, lawmakers tried to eliminate hanging but were thwarted by the joint efforts of death-penalty supporters and opponents. Some capital-punishment supporters worried that such legislation could help Campbell's appeal; opponents were concerned that doing away with hanging would make the death penalty seem more palatable.
"One of the things I think is going on is an attempt to sanitize the death penalty," said Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, one of a handful of legislators who voted against the 1996 law. "I'm not going to spend my time trying to end hanging. I'm going to spend my time trying to end the death penalty."
Perhaps the most ardent foe of hanging has been the state Department of Corrections. Prison directors and other corrections officials have argued that staff members involved in the executions might be traumatized; the officials also complained of the difficulty of finding people qualified to perform hangings.
One of Campbell's many appeals questioned whether the state had recruited a hangman from South Africa — a claim that was not based on any hard evidence, but rather on the fact that at the time, hangings hadn't occurred in the U.S. since 1965. In that year, four men were hanged in Kansas, including the two killers portrayed in Truman Capote's book "In Cold Blood."
Washington's Corrections Department said it kept the executioners' identities confidential.
If Elledge chooses hanging, the department will be prepared, said Corrections spokesman Veltry Johnson.
The Washington State Penitentiary near Walla Walla follows strict guidelines based on U.S. Army regulations for hanging, specifying everything from where to place the knot of the noose (behind the condemned's left ear) to what kind of hood the condemned person should wear (a "neutral color, the outer surface of rough materials").
Prison officials, lawmakers and other officials in the state's long debate on hanging say they don't know whether sentiment will arise again to get rid of the gallows.
Even some death-penalty opponents say keeping hanging an option helps their cause, by underscoring the cruelty of the death penalty. "It worked to our advantage with Rupe," said Rice, the Gonzaga University law professor. "Why should we get rid of it?"
Janet Burkitt can be reached at 206-515-5689 or jburkitt@seattletimes.com.