Connecticut Supreme Court says the death penalty is unconstitutional, banning

The court’s ruling cited factors that have come up in other states to abolish the death penalty including racial and economic disparities in its use, the costs involved with appeals, the cruelty of the wait for execution and the risk of executing innocent people.

“It takes the rug right out from under everything we tried to put in place”, said state Rep. Mary Fritz, D-Wallingford, a judiciary committee member and death penalty supporter.

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

“Multiple lawmakers never would have voted in support of repealing the death penalty if the legislation was retroactive”.

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the death penalty violated state constitutional bans on cruel and unusual punishment in a decision that spares the lives of 11 death-row inmates.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut issued a statement applauding the Supreme Court’s decision.

Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky now get life sentences for a 2007 home invasion robbery in which they raped and strangled Jennifer Petit, tied her daughters Hayley and Michaela to their beds, and set the home ablaze.

When Connecticut abolished the death penalty, it was “prospective”.

“I think David Webb is a danger to society”, she said. Thirty-one US states still allow executions. In 2012, the state Supreme Court ordered a new penalty hearing for Santiago after ruling the trial judge withheld key evidence.

As a result of the ruling, the inmates’ sentences will be converted to life without parole.

It’s been obscured by the headlong progress the country has made on the issue of marriage equality, but the backlash against capital punishment has continued by fits and starts all over the nation, while the backlash from the defenders of judicial killing, and the act itself, have grown more and more baroque. Their father managed to escape from the basement.

“The majority’s determination that the death penalty is unconstitutional under our state’s constitution is based on a house of cards, falling under the slightest breath of scrutiny”, he wrote. “My thoughts and prayers are with them during what must be a hard day”, Malloy concluded in his statement. Many said that would be overturned in the courts and that’s exactly what happened Thursday.

State Sen. Dante Bartolomeo, D-Meriden, whose district includes Cheshire, said the decision is a “profound disappointment”.

“Anytime you represent someone and they face the death penalty and you have the prospect of sitting through an execution, it’s a grim responsibility of the lawyer”, Ullmann said.