Here’s the decision (PDF), if anyone is interested.
A few things stood out.
First, despite the newspaper article’s claim that Rhode Island is the only state with a civil death statute, the court itself says that “New York, the Virgin Islands, and Rhode Island still retain civil death statutes for persons sentenced to life imprisonment” (p. 5).
Second, in the original case, the defendants didn’t bring up the civil death statute themselves; it was raised sua sponte by the judge, and then jumped on by the defendants’ attorney. Regarding the judge’s decision to raise the issue herself, the Supreme Court describes it as “a practice this Court generally frowns upon” (p. 7).
Third, and probably most importantly, the RI Supreme Court ruled that the Superior Court judge had erred in not dealing with the plaintiff’s motion to file a second amended complaint after the first one was shot down by the civil death law. The second complaint apparently made claims:
The Supreme Court remanded the case back to the Superior Court to “hear and decide the plaintiff’s motion to amend his complaint—upon the merits of which we take no position” (p. 11)
That amended complaint will, one assumes, deal directly with issues of cruel and unusual punishment (8th am.) and due process (14th).
Not according to my 12th grade civics teacher (this would have been 65 years ago) who claimed that even a lowly Justice of the Peace could rule that some law violated the US constitution and could not be enforced. Whether this law is in violation is another matter. I would think that the conviction was due process.
The legislation as referenced above specifically says something like “civil”.
So not legally dead at criminal law. Although this surely makes little difference in the case of the warder killing the prisoner, it must be important in cases where the prisoner kills the warder.