Massachusetts Death Penalty Bill Rejected

A bill to rein­state the death penal­ty in Massachusetts was reject­ed by the House of Representatives, end­ing Governor Mitt Romney’s effort to estab­lish a ​“gold stan­dard” for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. House mem­bers defeat­ed the mea­sure by a vote of 100 – 53 after four hours of floor debate. Romney had described the bill as ​“fool­proof,” stat­ing that it con­tained strict safe­guards that could pro­tect against wrong­ful con­vic­tions and that the nar­row scope of the bill meant that the death penal­ty would be rarely sought. Critics of the bill said that there was no way to write a ​“fool­proof” bill and that inno­cent peo­ple could still be exe­cut­ed. ​“No sys­tem that relies on sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence can tru­ly be devel­oped that flaw­less­ly and with no doubt sep­a­rates the guilty from the inno­cent,” said State Representative Eugene O’Flaherty. Massachusetts is one of twelve states with­out the death penal­ty. The last exe­cu­tion in the state was in 1947. (New York Times, November 16, 2005; DPIC update of final vote). See Innocence and Recent Legislative Developments.