Connecticut’s Supreme Court ordered the 11 men now facing execution on death row to be cleared of the death penalty in accordance with the 2012 law abolishing capital punishment.
Even though the people on death row now committed crimes and were delivered the death penalty sentence before the 2012 law, the court has been clear on its decision, according to The Washington Post.
The ruling was divided by a 4-3 vote, which established that the death penalty violates the state’s constitution, “no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and no longer serves any legitimate penological purpose.”
The head of the capital defense unit for the state’s Office of the Public Defender, Michael Courtney, said that the decision could be very influential nation-wide.
“The United States Supreme Court may consider these very issues under the federal constitution in the fall,” he said.
Following other states that have abolished the death penalty, Connecticut court’s ruling cited factors such as racial and economic disparities in its use, appeal costs and the overall cruelty of having people on death row wait for their execution. Another big factor that has come up over and over again is the risk of executing innocent people, as it has happened many times.
There has been a huge movement in the United States in opposition to the death penalty, though 31 states still have capital punishment. But several more states have started to turn against it recently. Those states include Nebraska that voted for abolition in May of this year and Maryland that abolished capital punishment in 2013.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center’s executive director Robert Dunham, last year set a record low for the number of death sentences in the nation.
Connecticut’s ruling followed an appeal from inmate Eduardo Santiago. His team of attorney’s argued that any execution that was set to happen after the 2012 repeal was cruel and unusual punishment. Santiago’s second penalty hearing for lethal injection was for a murder-for-hire in 2000.
Many Connecticut lawmakers refused to vote for the bill. They still had on their plate the death penalty that was given to Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes who were convicted of brutally killing and sexually assaulting a mother and two daughters in a home invasion in 2007. After the invasion, the mother was strangled to death and the children were doused with gasoline and the house was set on fire.
But Justice Richard Palmer said it wouldn’t be okay to execute other convicts “merely to achieve the politically popular end of killing two especially notorious inmates.”
But the ruling attracted harsh criticism from other justices and legislation that accused the court of taking over the role of policymakers.
“In making this determination, the majority disregards the obvious: the legislature, which represents the people of the state and is the best indicator of contemporary societal mores, expressly retained the death penalty for crimes committed before the effective date of (the repeal),” Chief Justice Chase Rogers wrote.
As of today, Connecticut has had only one execution since 1960 which was serial killer Michael Ross in 2005 after we won a legal fight to end his appeals.
Democratic Gov. Daniel P. Mally stated that those on death row will spend the rest of their lives in state prisons and will not have any chance of freedom ever.
“Today is a somber day where our focus should not be on the 11 men sitting on death row but with their victims and those surviving family members,” he said. “My thoughts and prayers are with them during what must be a difficult day.”
