EDITORIALS: Hartford Courant Calls for End to Connecticut’s Death Penalty

The Hartford Courant has called for an end to the death penalty in Connecticut, citing its costs and risks. The paper called a legislative committee’s work toward abolishing Connecticut’s death penalty “brave,” and said the state’s capital punishment system was “unworkable, not to mention expensive, unfair, and risky.” They quoted State Sen. Mary Anne Handley who said: “The death penalty is neither swift nor certain. It may even be certain that it’s not going to happen.” The editorial concluded, “The state’s goal should be to keep society safe. It can accomplish that without the expectation of executions that rarely if ever take place.” The full editorial may be read below:

Do Away With Death Penalty

LAW UNWORKABLE • Changes would lower costs, emotional toll

A legislative committee has taken a brave step toward abolishing Connecticut’s death penalty, a law that is all but unworkable, not to mention expensive, unfair and risky.

By unfair, we refer to the lopsided application of such laws nationwide. Minorities make up more than half of death row inmates.
By risky, we mean that 130 death row inmates have been exonerated around the nation in the past decade. There is evidence that others who were executed might have been innocent.

By expensive, we refer to the cost of the endless appeals that make Connecticut’s law practically unworkable.

Finally, the death penalty puts the state in the morally compromising position of committing the act for which it is punishing someone.

Everyone is entitled to due process, even convicted killers. Michael Ross, the only death row inmate to be executed in Connecticut in decades, asked to die. Yet his case was made only after it was laid out again and again in agonizing detail that must have been horribly hard on the families of his victims.

State Sen. Mary Anne Handley said it best: “The death penalty is neither swift nor certain. It may even be certain that it’s not going to happen.”

It is hear-trending to hear the testimony of Dr. William Petit Jr., whose wife and daughters were tormented and murdered in a 2007 home invasion. He favors the death penalty for the killers and views anything less as an injustice. It is not difficult to sympathize with his plight.

But the state has an obligation to separate justice from revenge. Changes in the law approved by the Judiciary Committee and headed for a House vote would bring swifter closure for victims by consigning those convicted of capital crimes to life in prison without parole. Locking up a killer for the rest of his days, where he can ponder his crime and his fate, seems a more potent punishment than putting him out of his misery.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell has restated her belief in the death penalty, foreshadowing a veto should the changes go through. She should take her cues from New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Last month, he signed a law repealing his state’s death penalty even though he personally supports it. He cited the error-prone judicial system, noting the death row inmates who have been exonerated in the past decade, including four in New Mexico.

The state’s goal should be to keep society safe. It can accomplish that without the expectation of executions that rarely if ever take place.

(Editorial, “Do away with the death penalty,” Hartford Courant, April 7, 2009). See Editorials and Recent Legislative Activity.