On March 8, Connecticut held a leg­isla­tive hear­ing about what should be done with the state’s death penal­ty. The Judiciary Committee has already approved a bill to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Connecticut has car­ried out only one exe­cu­tion since 1973, and that was with an inmate who waived his appeals and vol­un­teered for exe­cu­tion. The Chief State’s Attorney, Kevin T. Kane sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al to reform the sys­tem, but it would cur­tail the appeals process used to pro­tect against mis­takes. Kane told the Committee that the death penal­ty should be abol­ished if it wasn’t fixed. ​”Right now, we have a sit­u­a­tion that there’s no end to it,” said Kane. ​“There’s no end that I can see, at least in my life­time. There’s no hope that I can give a vic­tim … that the death penal­ty will be imposed. The leg­is­la­ture should either repeal it or fix it.” In 2005, Connecticut law­mak­ers also debat­ed a pro­pos­al to repeal capital punishment. 

(T. Mann, ​“Hearing cov­ers pro­posed death penal­ty reforms,” The Day, May 9, 2009). See Recent Legislative Activity. There are cur­rent­ly 10 peo­ple on the state’s death row, 7 of whom are black or Hispanic.

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