Washington state Attorney General announced bipartisan legislation to abolish the death penalty in Washington.
During the news conference on Monday, Ferguson joined by Governor Jay Inslee and a group of legislators from across the aisle and around the state.
"There is no role for capital punishment in a fair, equitable and humane justice system," Ferguson said. "The Legislature has evaded a vote on the death penalty for years. The public deserves to know where their representatives stand."
In a current suspension of the death penalty, Gov. Jay Inslee pledged two years ago to halt executions while he's in office. Though Inslee vowed to halt executions, the death penalty remains on the books. Once Inslee leaves office, another governor can choose to restart executions.
[ Inslee imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2014 ]
, and repeal bills introduced since that time have stalled in the Legislature.
Last month, Inslee invoked the moratorium as he reprieved Clark Elmore, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl.
Reprieves aren't pardons and don't commute the sentences of those condemned to death. As long as the moratorium is in place, death-row inmates will remain in prison rather than face execution.
Elmore is the first of Washington's death row inmates to exhaust his appeals since the moratorium was put in place. He remains at the state prison in Walla Walla, along with seven other death row inmates.
There have been 78 inmates, all men, put to death in Washington state since 1904. The last execution in the state came in September 2010, when Cal Coburn Brown died by lethal injection for the 1991 murder of a Seattle-area woman. After spending nearly 17 years on death row, he was the first Washington inmate executed since 2001.
The death penalty is currently authorized by the federal government and 31 states, including Washington and Oregon, which also currently has a moratorium in place. Pennsylvania and Colorado also have death penalty moratoriums.
The death penalty has been overturned or abolished in 19 states and the District of Columbia. The latest was Delaware, whose Supreme Court last year declared the state's death penalty law unconstitutional.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.