Connecticut’s top court overturns death penalty in state

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.

The 4-3 decision came three years after the state passed a law that repealed the death penalty but did not spare those already sentenced to die.

Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes were sentenced to death for the slayings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her daughters, Michaela and Hayley. Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano (R-North Haven) said the state’s Supreme Court “stepped way out of line and wrongfully took on the role of policymakers”.

A top court in the US state of Connecticut has overturned the death penalty for inmates on death row, deeming it unconstitutional. Nebraska was the most recent to abolish it last May.

As Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said in a statement issued after the court’s decision was announced, “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 families members”. The ruling officially leaves the state without a death penalty.

“One will be subject to execution and the other will not, not because of the nature of the crime or the existence or absence of any aggravating or mitigating factor, but because of the date on which the crime was committed”, the DoCJ’s testimony reads.

Kardaras says he understands how people like Dr. Petit feel when it comes to death penalty, but he and fellow anti-death penalty advocates argue that even though the act is gone, punishment still remains.

“So the compromise was to get to the bigger picture, which was that the death penalty needed, from my perspective, to go away”. Santiago’s lawyers appealed the death sentence on grounds the the law abolishing capital punishment created “an impermissible and arbitrary distinction between individuals who committed murders before and after April 25, 2012”.

“For people who commit such heinous and horrific crimes – when you torture and rape them and their children, douse them with gasoline and burn them alive – is there not something that should be worse?”

Eleven prisoners have been removed from death row.

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.

“The way that the death penalty is carried out is unfair”, McGuire said.

This post has been updated with more detail on the case and the background of the death penalty repeal law.