Not in my name--Opposing Darold Stenson's execution

From Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation amicus brief:

MVFR opposes the death penalty because of its corrosive effect on the families of the victims of homicides that result in capital prosecutions. We believe this effect has been particularly pronounced in Washington. While arbitrariness may not be the sole reason for this corrosive effect, it is a primary cause.
For the murder victims’ family members, the death penalty establishes a hierarchy of victims where some lives are valued more than others. It turns family members against each other. It creates a class of “good” or “deserving” victims and “bad” or “undeserving” victims.
While the survivors of the victims of one notorious murderer in Washington have seen him go to his death involuntarily, and in three other instances victims’ families have watched their loved ones’ murderers fulfill death wishes by judicially approved suicide, dozens of families have been dragged through the ordeal of capital litigation only to see, after years or decades, the process end with a prison sentence that would have seemed just at the beginning but often feels markedly unjust by the end.[1]
More than fourteen years have passed since the last involuntary execution in this state. In fact, only two such executions have occurred in almost 50 years. In addition, the rate of death sentencing in the state has markedly declined. No one new has been sentenced to death in Washington for over six years—the last person was Robert Yates on October 3, 2002. The only other residents of death row sentenced since 1998 are Dayva Cross and Cecil Davis, who was resentenced to death in May 2007, for a January, 1997, crime.
From the perspective of the friends and family of victims of murder, it is impossible to make any sense of the outcome of the capital punishment system in this state. This arbitrariness does not serve, but rather harms victims. The arbitrariness that infects our capital punishment system naturally invites a comparison of a victim’s moral and familial worthiness—where the loss of some life is inevitably seen as more valuable than the loss of other life. It is elemental that our system of justice should not tolerate such distinctions.
Considering this inexplicable randomness in our current system of capital punishment, it could legitimately be likened to a lottery where only the exceptionally unlucky few draw the losing number. See Martin, Earl; Tessie Hutchinson and the American System of Capital Punishment; 59 Md. L. Rev, 553 (2000) (comparing our current capital punishment system to the arbitrary stoning of a random villager every June 27th, as described in Shirley Jackson’s harrowing short story, The Lottery). Indeed, once the full scope of the dysfunction within the system is acknowledged, it becomes very difficult to say that the random selection of defendants for the death penalty would be any different from how our criminal justice system currently decides the fate of capital defendants. Borrowing once again from Justice Stewart, the process by which we select the condemned has the same sense of justice as that exhibited by a stroke of lightning.
[1] Only one prisoner has been put to death involuntarily in Washington since 1964: Charles Rodman Campbell. Three others (Westley Dodd, Jamie Segastagui and James Elledge) have had requests to be executed granted. During this same time, 295 aggravated murder reports have been filed. 8,298 victims have been murdered in Washington between 1964 and 2007. (See Washington Crime Rates 1960-2007, “Washington Enforcement Agency Uniform Crime Reports 1980-2005” (www.disastercenter.com/crime/wacrime.htm) (last visited on November 3, 2008)).