“We hold that capital punishment, as now applied, violates the constitution of Connecticut”, the court ruled.The Death Penalty Information Center says there are 11 men on death row in Connecticut.The state reenacted the death penalty by lethal injection in 1973, after which its first execution was in 2005.
Advertisement
Connecticut’s Supreme Court is expected to release a decision today that could decide the fate of the inmates now on the state’s death row.
“This state’s death penalty no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and no longer serves any legitimate penological goal”, according to Associate Justice Richard Palmer, who wrote for the majority.
The ruling comes in an appeal from a 12th inmate, Eduardo Santiago, whose attorneys had argued that any execution carried out after the 2012 repeal would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. A 2012 statute repealed capital punishment for future crimes-but not for crimes committed before the date the law was enacted. Santiago killed Joseph Niwinski in West Hartford in 2000.
Connecticut’s death chamber. WTNH file image.
Connecticut has had just one execution since 1960.
The court noted that the punishment is imposed only rarely, saying there was a “freakishness” in its use and that there were wide disparities in its application depending on a defendant’s race or economic class.
That ruling came just weeks after lawmakers passed the death-penalty repeal.
Senior assistant state’s attorney Harry Weller argued there were no constitutional problems with the new law.
Advertisement
The state hadn’t executed anyone since 2005, when the notorious serial killer Michael Ross, who became Catholic after his arrest, finally received the punishment he had wanted for so long.
