By Alexis Krell

The News Tribune

The death penalty is unconstitutional because it is “imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner,” the Washington State Supreme Court said in a ruling Thursday.

The decision involved the Pierce County case of Allen Eugene Gregory, who was sentenced to death for the 1996 rape and murder of Geneine Harshfield at her home in Tacoma.

His death sentence and those of the other inmates on death row in the state will be converted to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the ruling says.

In appealing his sentence, Gregory commissioned a University of Washington study that found black defendants in the state were four and a half times more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants in similar situations.

“By striking down the 1981 death penalty statute, Washington now joins the overwhelming majority of the world’s democracies in its respect for human life,” Neil Fox, one of Gregory’s attorneys, said in a statement.

The high court’s decision notes that the state Legislature could enact a new capital punishment law but that “it cannot create a system that offends constitutional rights.”

Gov. Jay Inslee told reporters Thursday that he would veto such legislation.

He put a moratorium on the death penalty in 2014, which has kept it from being carried out while he’s in office.

“Today’s decision by the state Supreme Court thankfully ends the death penalty in Washington,” Inslee said in a statement. “… This is a hugely important moment in our pursuit for equal and fair application of justice.”

Gregory, 46, is one of eight inmates on death row in Washington, and one of three who committed their crimes in Pierce County.

He tied up, raped and slashed 43-year-old Harshfield in her kitchen.

Two juries sentenced him to die. The state Supreme Court overturned his first death sentence, citing judicial and prosecutorial error.

Pierce County prosecutors tried for the death penalty again, and jurors sentenced Gregory to it once more in 2012.

“As noted by appellant, the use of the death penalty is unequally applied — sometimes by where the crime took place, or the county of residence, or the available budgetary resources at any given point in time, or the race of the defendant,” Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst wrote for the majority, in an opinion signed by four other justices. “The death penalty, as administered in our state, fails to serve any legitimate penological goal.”

The other four justices signed a concurring opinion that said they agreed the death penalty should be invalidated but for additional reasons.

In that opinion, Justice Charles Johnson wrote: “Where a system exists permeated with arbitrary decision-making, random imposition of the death penalty, unreliability, geographic rarity, and excessive delays, such a system cannot constitutionally stand.”

The other inmates on death row for Pierce County crimes are 66-year-old serial killer Robert Lee Yates and 59-year-old Cecil Emile Davis.

Yates killed 24-year-old Melinda Mercer in 1997 and 35-year-old Connie LaFontaine Ellis in 1998. He shot the women in the head, and dumped their bodies in Tacoma. He’s admitted to killing 15 people over multiple decades in Washington.

Davis killed 65-year-old Yoshiko Couch in 1997 in Tacoma, as her invalid husband was home but couldn’t help her.

Davis raped Couch, smothered her with towels soaked in toxic solvent and robbed the couple, including taking the wedding ring off her finger.