When Gov. John Carney signed Delaware House Bill 70 late last month, he officially repealed Delaware’s death penalty, the final act in a process that began eight years ago when the state Supreme Court found the state’s death penalty statute unconstitutional. HB 70 mandates that anyone over the age of 18 convicted of first-degree murder must be sentenced to life in prison without parole, according to Delaware.gov
“The death penalty has disproportionately affected communities of color, with Blacks and Hispanics making up over 50 percent of inmates on death row. . . . I do not believe we should be in the business of state-sanctioned murder. Today, we are closer to a more perfect union,” stated Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker, one of three sponsors of the bill.
Although Delaware hasn’t had the death penalty since 2016, Delaware.gov noted that, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, the state “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.”