(NEW YORK) MintPress — After nine hours of heated debate, the legislature in Connecticut this week became the fifth in five years – following those in New York, New Jersey, New Mexico and Illinois — to approve the repeal of the death penalty for future crimes.
In a statement released after the House vote — the bill passed in the Senate earlier this month — Governor Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, said, “When I sign this, Connecticut will join 16 other states and almost every other industrialized nation in moving toward what I believe is better public policy.”
Benjamin Todd Jealous, the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said after watching the debate,
“It… moves our nation forward.”
“It’s definitely part of a larger trend,” asserted Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a national research group critical of the death penalty. “There’s less public support. So the trends are in the same direction.”
But 33 states still uphold the use of capital punishment, and, as with many other controversial issues, the country is still largely split along party lines. The number of executions nationally dropped to 43 last year from 98 in 1998. Since executions resumed in 1976 after being halted by the Supreme Court, there have been 1,060 in the heavily Republican South, 150 in the Midwest, 75 in the West and 4 in the mainly Democratic Northeast.
Arguments for and against
Advocates of the death penalty argue that it deters serious crime, makes sure that convicted criminals do not offend again and is a just punishment for heinous acts of violence. Opponents of capital punishment, however, contend that it discriminates against minorities and the poor, violates human rights and encourages a culture of violence.
Throughout the debate in Connecticut, legislators also discussed finances and wrongful convictions. Said Rep. Auden Grogins (D-Bridgeport), “The law is costly, can be arbitrarily applied and does not produce accurate results. It is not unusual for the legal process, from the beginning to the end, to take 20 years.”
Rep. Terry Backer (D-Stratford) for his part said, “We have an imperfect system and there are many mistakes we make as government. Unfortunately, when we are wrong in these cases, there is no way to put them back on track.”
Injustice for the innocent?
Indeed, it’s frequently argued that capital punishment leads to miscarriage of justice through the execution of innocent people, and there are claims that as many as 39 executions have been carried out in the U.S. despite compelling evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt from 1992 through 2004.
At the same time, according to the Innocence Project, newly available DNA evidence has exonerated 289 people since 1989, 17 of whom served time on death row.
Britain abolished capital punishment in part because of the case of Timothy Evans, a Welsh man who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and daughter and hanged in 1950.
In the U.S., though, since 1976 none of those executed has been given a posthumous pardon.
Connecticut’s critics
The situation in Connecticut is especially contentious because the repeal does not apply to the 11 inmates already on death row, two of whom were sentenced to die for the notoriously brutal 2007 attack on the family of Dr. William Petit.
After entering their home in the middle of the night, the men beat Petit with a baseball bat and tied him up before dragging his wife to a bank to withdraw money. One of the assailants then raped and strangled her, while his accomplice raped the doctor’s 11-year-old daughter. The girl and her 17-year-old sister were tied to their beds, doused in fuel and left to burn as the intruders set the house ablaze and fled.
Petit escaped to a neighbor’s house and called the police, and the two men were caught shortly afterwards. Since their sentencing, Petit and his sister Johanna have lobbied against the abolition of capital punishment.
“We believe in the death penalty because we believe it is really the only true, just punishment for certain heinous and depraved murders,” he said.. “One thing you never hear the abolitionists talk about is the victims, almost never. The forgotten people. The people who died and can’t be here to speak for themselves.”
In fact, a bill similar to the one just passed was approved by both chambers in 2009 but vetoed by then-governor Jodi Rell, a Republican, because of the Petit case.
Today’s opponents of the repeal call it hypocritical to outlaw capital punishment in the future while keeping it in place for those already sentenced. “You either support the death penalty and taking somebody’s life or you don’t,” said Rep. Themis Klarides, a Republican from Woodbridge. “You can’t support it for these guys, but not for these guys.”
Meanwhile, death penalty opponents say Maryland could be the next state to repeal capital punishment. Kansas and Montana are discussing it, and California is likely to have a public referendum in November.
With lawyers for the inmates in the Petty case likely to use the new bill to appeal the men’s sentences, the debate in Connecticut is likely to rage on.