Connecticut Supreme Court Finds Death Penalty Violates State Constitution

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on August 13 that the death penalty violates the state constitution. In the 4-3 decision in State v. Santiago, the Court said that, because of the prospective repeal of the death penalty in 2012 and “the state’s near total moratorium on carrying out executions over the past fifty-five years, capital punishment has become incompatible with contemporary standards of decency in Connecticut.” As a result, the Court said, it “now violates the state constitutional prohibition against excessive and disproportionate punishments.”

The Court also stated that “the death penalty now fails to satisfy any legitimate penological purpose and is unconstitutionally excessive on that basis as well.”

The state’s prospective repeal had left 11 men on death row, but the ruling replaces their sentences with life without parole. The Court concluded, “In prospectively abolishing the death penalty, the legislature did not simply express the will of the people that it no longer makes sense to maintain the costly and unsatisfying charade of a capital punishment scheme in which no one ever receives the ultimate punishment.

Public Act 12-5 also held a mirror up to Connecticut’s long, troubled history with capital punishment: the steady replacement by more progressive forms of punishment; the increasing inability to achieve legitimate penological purposes; the freakishness with which the sentence of death is imposed; the rarity with which it is carried out; and the racial, ethnic, and socio-economic biases that likely are inherent in any discretionary death penalty system. Because such a system fails to comport with our abiding freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, we hold that capital punishment, as currently applied, violates the constitution of Connecticut.”