A retired prison warden, victims’ family members, and a former death row inmate were among the nearly 75 speakers at a state Judiciary Committee hearing in Hartford, almost all of whom proposed ending Connecticut’s death penalty. Many of the witnesses noted that the death penalty brings no relief to victims’ family members, fails to deter murder, risks innocent lives, and is applied in an arbitrary way.

“I’m here to tell you that I never met an inmate for whom I had no hope,” said Mary Morgan Wolff, a former state deputy warden who worked 37 years for the state Department of Corrections.

Laurence Adams, a former death row inmate from Massachusetts, told the committee that he was freed in 2004 by long-forgotten evidence proving his innocence. “I’m here today because Massachusetts abolished the death penalty,” he noted as he described his 30 years in prison for a crime he did not commit and the likelihood that he would have been executed long before his recent exoneration if the state had not ended capital punishment.

During later testimony, Elizabeth Brancato said that despite her initial rage and belief that the man who murdered her mother should be executed, she later concluded that his execution would not bring her peace.

Testimony from Connecticut’s chief public defender noted that of the 69 people who have been convicted in Connecticut of capital crimes, only seven are on death row and six of those men were prosecuted in one jurisdiction. “The determination of who lives and who dies is totally subjective and controlled by a variety of arbitrary factors,” said Gerard Smyth.

(Hartford Courant, February 1, 2005). See Life Without Parole, Innocence, and Victims.