By Steve Irsay, Court TV
How many people must someone kill to be executed in Washington state?
The question, while blunt, is being raised in the case against accused Green River serial killer Gary Ridgway.
Two years ago authorities charged Ridgway, 54, with four counts of aggravated first-degree murder in the early 1980s deaths of four Seattle-area women. Three more aggravated murder charges were quickly tacked on, and prosecutors vowed to seek the death penalty.
In recent months, Green River Task Force investigators began uncovering remains of victims they did not even know existed. As the body count rose, it fueled speculation that Ridgway, a bespectacled truck painter, was cooperating with authorities to save his own life.
On Wednesday, Ridgway is expected to plead guilty to killing at least 48 women over two decades, the first of whom were found along King County’s Green River in 1982.
The deal would spare the life of one of the country’s most prolific serial killers. In doing so, it inevitably raises legal questions about Washington’s capital punishment process. The lives of 10 men currently on the state’s death row could be affected by the deal, and at least one potential capital case has already been postponed partly because of Ridgway’s case.
An equation for execution?
Some see the controversy as a simple matter of fairness: how could a man who admits to killing nearly 50 people be spared while someone who kills one person is sentenced to die? Legally, however, the question is one of “proportionality.”
In Washington, proportionality requires that, during an automatic appeal, the state Supreme Court consider whether execution is “excessive or disproportionate” with respect to penalties in similar cases. The cases for comparison must be death-eligible, which in Washington means all aggravated first-degree murder cases since 1965 regardless of whether the death penalty was sought or not.
Washington’s death penalty statute, adopted in 1981, was closely modeled on Georgia’s law, which has a proportionality provision. Although the U.S. Supreme Court urged, but did not require, states to include proportionality in their death penalty laws, most states with capital punishment have some sort of proportionality review.
As a death-eligible case with a staggering death count, does the Ridgway case now become the new yardstick against which other capital cases will be compared and overturned?
Not likely. Proportionality, many experts say, will remain difficult to evaluate regardless of the Ridgway case.
“It is impossible to know how subjective proportionality is,” said Washington defense lawyer Todd Maybrown, who has represented several death penalty clients. “We can’t even come up with a formula. If a person kills one individual in a way that is horrific, how do you compare that to someone who kills 40 people and those deaths are painless?”
Proportionality reviews do not consist solely of murder victim tallies. Washington Supreme Court justices consider several factors, including the nature of the crime, the defendant and the victim, as well as aggravating and mitigating factors, such as childhood abuse or low IQ.
Despite a standardized process that it undergoes for each death penalty case, the court has yet to overturn a death sentence on the basis of proportionality. The state has executed four people since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pam Loginsky of the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, cautions against the “if Ridgway doesn’t get death then who will” concerns about executing defendants with fewer victims.
“The fact that one person you thought should get death didn’t, doesn’t render every single death sentence disproportionate,” she said. “You will always have cases that you can look at and say, ‘How did that person not get the death penalty?’”
Authorities won’t publicly confirm the existence of the Ridgway plea deal, let alone the reasoning behind the controversial move. But cost and closure are two possible motivations being bandied about.
The Green River case has already set cost records in King County, with a $12 million price tag over the last two years alone. A death penalty trial for Ridgway would likely be one of the longest and most complex in U.S. history.
“I think the plea has to do with dealing with a whole lot of people’s cases that are not being prosecuted,” said Seattle defense attorney Tim Ford.
Others point to the value of the information Ridgway can provide to investigators and, in turn, victims’ families.
“The reason why Ridgway will avoid death is not because he doesn’t deserve it but because he can provide closure for 40 to 50 families in Washington,” said Tom McBride, executive secretary of the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.
Gauging the effect, if any
The Ridgway case is raising many of the same questions raised three years ago in another Washington serial murder case. In 2000, decorated Army veteran and father of five Robert Yates, known as the Spokane Serial Killer, pleaded guilty to 13 murders in Spokane in exchange for his life.
But two more of Yates’ victims were later found in Pierce County, where prosecutors charged Yates with aggravated murder. Yates was tried in Pierce and sentenced to death.
Yates’ attorney is appealing that death sentence on proportionality grounds, arguing that if Yates didn’t get a death sentence for 13 murders in one county, how could he be sentenced to die for two killings in another?
The Yates case also signals that, even with a plea deal, Ridgway’s life could still be in danger. Ridgway could face murder charges in Pierce County and in the state of Oregon, where more victims’ remains have been linked to his alleged killing spree. His likely deal in King County would not necessarily preclude a death sentence against him in other jurisdictions.
Besides being fuel for future proportionality reviews, the Ridgway case is affecting at least one case in which prosecutors have yet to decide on capital charges.
Citing in part a possible Ridgway plea deal, defense attorneys sought and were granted a delay in the Snohomish County murder trial of John Phillip Anderson, 21, and John Alan Whitaker, 23. Both are charged with aggravated murder in the September 2002 slaying of 18-year-old Rachael Burkheimer.
“We thought that the state should take what happens in Ridgway into consideration,” said Anderson’s public defender Susan Gaer. “The Supreme Court is required to look at proportionality, and by the same token prosecutors, when they are making the death penalty decision, should look at proportionality.”
Prosecutors did not oppose the delay, and the deadline for the death penalty decision is now Jan. 30, 2004.
Despite the questions being raised, death penalty opponents are not heralding the Ridgway deal as a potentially crippling blow to capital punishment in Washington.
Rather, many see the case as just another anomaly, not unlike the racial, financial and geographical trends among death row inmates that are often cited as reasons that capital punishment cannot be meted out fairly.
“To me, the Ridgway case is just one more straw,” said defense lawyer Ford. “Maybe it is the straw that will break the camel’s back, but I think that is wishful thinking. I think it’s another example of how the death penalty is full of disparities.”