California’s death penalty has been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge, The Associated Press reports.

“Inordinate and unpredictable delay has resulted in a death penalty system in which very few of the hundreds of individuals sentenced to death have been, or even will be, executed by the State,”  U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney wrote on Wednesday, according to The AP.

He added that “arbitrary factors, rather than legitimate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the death sentence, determine whether an individual will actually be executed.”

The ruling is in line with another federal judge who put the state’s death penalty on hold in 2006 when he wrote that its lethal injection process had to be changed.

According to Business Insider, more than 900 people have been sentenced to death in California since 1978, but only 13 have been executed. The Death Penalty Information Center adds that no executions have taken place in the last five years in the Golden State.

Who will this impact? According to the New York Daily News, death row inmate Scott Peterson, for example, could have his sentence changed to life in prison. Peterson killed his pregnant wife and unborn child in 2002.

What do you think of Judge Carney’s decision? Sound off in the comments section.