The Connecticut Supreme Court banned the death penalty in the state on Thursday, saying that it would be unconstitutional to execute the remaining inmates on the state's death row. The decision follows three years after Connecticut abolished capital punishment while leaving death sentences intact for inmates already on death row.
Associate Justice Richard Palmer, and three other justices, wrote that the death penalty in Connecticut "no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and no longer serves any legitimate penological purpose," The Washington Post reported.
The decision came as the court deliberated on an appeal from a death row inmate, Eduardo Santiago, sentenced to die for a murder-for-hire killing in 2000. The ruling also found that executing prisoners have not discouraged would-be criminals from committing murder.
"Connecticut's capital punishment scheme no longer comports with our state's contemporary standards of decency. It therefore offends the state constitutional prohibition against excessive and disproportionate punishment. In the absence of any indication that the death penalty, as administered in this state, has forestalled the commission of capital crimes, it is apparent that capital punishment no longer serves any meaningful deterrent function in Connecticut," the court said a 4-3 decision, reports NBC News.
Gov. Dannel Malloy signed a bill into law in 2012 that abolished the death penalty, making the state the 17th in the nation to abandon capital punishment. "Today is a somber day where our focus should not be on the 11 men sitting on death row, but with their victims and those surviving families members. My thoughts and prayers are with them during what must be a difficult day," he said in the statement, according to CNN.
The ruling brought back into focus the case of Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, who were convicted of killing a mother and her two daughters in a highly publicized 2007 home invasion in Cheshire. The duo was awaiting execution.
Jennifer Hawke-Petit was raped and strangled. Her daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, died of smoke inhalation after they were doused with gasoline and the house was set on fire. Michaela was sexually assaulted. Their father, Dr. William Petit, managed to escape from the basement.
