West Hartford Police Chief James Strillacci, pres­i­dent of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, has told state law­mak­ers that resources devot­ed to the death penal­ty would be bet­ter spent else­where. He not­ed, ​“It is a prac­ti­cal issue. We have a death penal­ty law on the books, but we haven’t exe­cut­ed any­one since 1960, and it does­n’t look like any­one will be exe­cut­ed. The process is long, labor inten­sive and expen­sive. Now, any mon­ey we’ve put into death penal­ty cas­es has real­ly been wast­ed.” Strillacci said death penal­ty funds would be more wise­ly spent on oth­er aspects of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, such as foren­sics, DNA evi­dence col­lec­tion and cat­a­logu­ing, and oth­er aspects of the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion process. He said that this real­lo­ca­tion of funds would result in the con­vic­tion of more crim­i­nals and the exon­er­a­tion of more inno­cent peo­ple. (New Haven Register, February 29, 2004). See New Voices and Costs.

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