OLYMPIA, Wash. — The state Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of convicted serial killer Robert Yates Jr., refusing to throw out capital punishment because prosecutors are inconsistent in dealing with mass murderers.
In a lopsided 8-1 ruling, the state’s highest court refused to overturn Yates’ conviction and death sentence for shooting two Tacoma prostitutes and suffocating them by tying plastic grocery bags over their heads.
Yates, a blue-collar smelter worker and Air National Guard helicopter pilot, also has a 408-year sentence for murdering 13 women in Spokane, Walla Walla and Skagit counties, all prostitutes he killed in the same manner as the Tacoma women.
Yates had asked the court to take a fresh look at how capital punishment is applied in Washington, pointing to the life sentence drawn by the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, who pleaded guilty to killing 48 women. Yates also stressed that he himself got life in prison for slaying 13 women in a plea-bargain with Spokane County, but a death sentence for killing two Tacoma women.
That disparity shows that Washington state allows “disproportionate, freakish, wanton and random” application of the death penalty, Yates’ lawyers told the high court last fall.
Yates also hotly contested Pierce County’s decision to withdraw from what he called a deal with Spokane prosecutors to take the death penalty off the table in exchange for a guilty plea and information about his victims.
But the high court swept away all of his points, saying prosecutors’ discretion to seek the death penalty as they see fit doesn’t pose a basic constitutional flaw in how the state applies capital punishment.
“That Yates was permitted to avoid the death penalty in Spokane County by pleading guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder was the product of the Spokane County prosecuting attorney’s exercise of discretion.
“Likewise the King County prosecutor exercised his discretion and allowed Ridgway to avoid a death sentence by pleading guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first degree murder.”
After Ridgway avoided lethal injection for the state’s worst mass murders, legal scholars and lawmakers began debating whether the state could ever use capital punishment again.
The high court answered that question in clear terms Thursday.
The names of some of Washington’s most notorious killers came up in the arguments, including Ted Bundy and the mass murderers who killed 13 people in a Seattle Chinatown gambling club. None is on death row — Bundy was executed in Florida — and so Yates’ appeal was described as the first involving a Washington serial killer who was sentenced to die here.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
