S-1312               _______________________________________________

                                                   SENATE BILL NO. 6489

                        _______________________________________________

State of Washington                               51st Legislature                              1990 Regular Session

By Senator Rinehart

Read first time 1/15/90 and referred to Committee on Law & Justice.

AN ACT Relating to the death penalty; and amending RCW 10.95.030.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

        Sec. 1.  Section 3, chapter 138, Laws of 1981 and RCW 10.95.030 are each amended to read as follows:

          (1) Except as provided in subsection (2) of this section, any person convicted of the crime of aggravated first degree murder shall be sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of release or parole.  A person sentenced to life imprisonment under this section shall not have that sentence suspended, deferred, or commuted by any judicial officer and the ((board of prison terms and paroles)) indeterminate sentence review board or its successor may not parole such prisoner nor reduce the period of confinement in any manner whatsoever including but not limited to any sort of good-time calculation.  The department of social and health services or its successor or any executive official may not permit such prisoner to participate in any sort of release or furlough program.

          (2) If, pursuant to a special sentencing proceeding held under RCW 10.95.050, the trier of fact finds that there are not sufficient mitigating circumstances to merit leniency, the sentence shall be death.  However, the sentence of death shall not be imposed on a person who is challenged by mental retardation, which is defined as follows:

Mental retardation is a condition resulting in significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning as evidenced by:

(a) A diagnosis of mental retardation documented by a licensed psychologist or certified school psychologist;

(b) A substantial handicap when the individual has an intelligence quotient score of more than two standard deviations below the mean using the Stanford-Binet, Wechsler, or Leiter international performance scale;

(c) An intelligence quotient score which is not:

(i) Expected to improve with treatment, instruction, or skill acquisition above the established level; or

(ii) Attributable to mental illness or other psychiatric condition; and

(d) Originates before the individual reaches twenty-one years of age.