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.”