Connecticut Supreme Court Reaffirms Retroactive Death Penalty Repeal

In a 5 – 2 deci­sion issued May 26, the Connecticut Supreme Court reaf­firmed its August 2015 deci­sion in State v. Santiago that the death penal­ty vio­lates Connecticut’s state constitution. 

Connecticut prospec­tive­ly repealed the death penal­ty in 2012, leav­ing eleven men on death row. In Santiago, the court ruled that ​“cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has become incom­pat­i­ble with con­tem­po­rary stan­dards of decen­cy in Connecticut,” and replaced the eleven remain­ing death sen­tences with life without parole. 

Prosecutors unsuc­cess­ful­ly asked the court to recon­sid­er its 4 – 3 deci­sion in Santiago, and then, after one of the mem­bers of the major­i­ty left the court, sought to over­turn the deci­sion in the next cap­i­tal appeal to reach the court, State v. Peeler. However, the new Justice, Richard A. Robinson, and Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers, one of the Santiago dis­senters, joined the oth­er jus­tices from the Santiago major­i­ty in apply­ing Santiago to over­turn Russell Peeler​’s death sen­tences and direct that he be sen­tenced to two terms of life without parole. 

In her con­cur­ring opin­ion, Chief Justice Rogers wrote, ​“I feel bound by the doc­trine of stare deci­sis in this case for one sim­ple rea­son — my respect for the rule of law. To reverse an impor­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al issue with­in a peri­od of less than one year sole­ly because of a change in jus­tices on the pan­el that is charged with decid­ing the issue, in my opin­ion, would raise legit­i­mate con­cerns by the peo­ple we serve about the court’s integri­ty and the rule of law in the state of Connecticut.” 

Justice Robinson expressed a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment in his con­cur­ring opin­ion: ​“In my view, stare deci­sis con­sid­er­a­tions of this court’s insti­tu­tion­al legit­i­ma­cy and sta­bil­i­ty are at their zenith in this par­tic­u­lar case, giv­en that the only thing that has changed since this court decid­ed Santiago is the com­po­si­tion of this court.” 

The three jus­tices from the Santiago major­i­ty also respond­ed to the pros­e­cu­tion’s sub­stan­tive attack on that deci­sion. They wrote that ​“the per­sis­tent, long-term declines in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment are just what they appear to be — evi­dence that con­tem­po­rary stan­dards of decen­cy have evolved away from exe­cu­tion as a nec­es­sary and accept­able form of pun­ish­ment” and that Connecticut’s actu­al death penal­ty prac­tices ​“con­sti­tute[ ] what has come to be seen as cru­el and unusual.”