Connecticut Ends Exemptions to Its Death-Penalty Ban

“We will continue to look to the judicial system for additional guidance on this rule”. Too often, the death penalty is applied arbitrarily and in a racially biased manner. But several more states have started to turn against it recently. She voted in favor of repeal in 2012.

The decision came in the case of Eduardo Santiago, a Torrington man convicted of a murder for hire in 2000.

The court ruled in the 4-3 decision.

Two of the state’s most high profile death row convicts include Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, who were sentenced to death for killing members of the Petit family in 2007.

Thirty-one U.S. states still allow for executions. He hopes the legislature will reexamine the issue. “It got me going”.

The Connecticut Supreme Court on Thursday finally put an end to the state’s death penalty charade.

As a result of today’s ruling, Connecticut will avoid the costs and challenges that other states have faced in trying to procure lethal injection drugs that increasingly are hard to obtain.

That means the 11 men on the state’s death row would no longer be subject to execution orders.

In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer based his reasoning – in part – on the increasing number of states that have abandoned capital punishment. William Petit was the sole survivor after he managed to escape from the basement where he was tied.

“When you think about national impact, its certainly significant that a state court has said ‘the death penalty offends evolving standards of decency, ‘” Dunham told The Huffington Post.

“The people writing the bill thought they’d covered that eventuality”.

Kylie’s grandmother, Flo Tipke, said the court ruling was a blow.

Not all, however, are happy about the court’s decision. If lawmakers felt a majority of Connecticut citizens supported capital punishment-as 62 percent of them still did according to a Quinnipiac poll conducted around the time the 2012 law passed-they might be able to write up a new law that permits the death penalty.

State. Rep. Emil “Buddy” Altobello, D-Meriden, voted against repeal under former governor M. Jodi Rell.

“What’s important, Justice Breyer said, was whether there was a national consensus developing against the death penalty”, Dunham said.

“We really don’t have an effective death penalty”. Both volunteered to be executed.

The Petit family home-invasion murders drew global attention: Two men raped and strangled a mother and molested one of her daughters in Connecticut.

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.