A sweeping decision this week by the Connecticut Supreme Court that found the death penalty no longer meets society’s evolving standards of decency could be influential across a nation that is increasingly questioning the practice, legal experts said.
Thursday’s ruling found capital punishment violates the Connecticut constitution, but the justices backed their decision by citing what abolitionists say are universal problems with the death penalty, including economic disparities in its use, the costs involved with appeals, the inherent cruelty involved in lengthy waits for execution and the risk of executing innocent people.
“It reads as a missive to the US Supreme Court,” Quinnipiac University law professor and death penalty law expert Kevin Barry said. “It is a blueprint for our nation’s high court to strike down the death penalty nationally.”
Thirty-one states still have capital punishment, but seven states have eliminated it in the past decade, including Nebraska in May and Maryland in 2013, which both passed legislation outlawing the death penalty.
Connecticut’s abolishment is different, because it comes in the form of a court ruling, one that found the 2012 state law that banned executions for future crimes did not go far enough, experts said.
The ruling could also influence courts in states such as Maryland and New Mexico, which, like Connecticut, eliminated the death penalty only for future crimes, said Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School and a proponent of the limited use of capital punishment. States including Delaware, Colorado, Kansas, New Hampshire and Washington are also considering repealing the death penalty only for future crimes, he said.
The death penalty was widely used in the US for decades until the 1960s, when questions about its fairness reached the US Supreme Court, which eventually ruled capital punishment unconstitutional in 1972. After states reworked their laws, the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976.
In recent years, the number of death sentences and executions in the US has plummeted as juries take advantage of new laws offering life with no chance of parole and as prosecutors hesitate to bring capital charges because of the cost, especially at the appeals stage. In the past five years, executions have slowed again while the supply of lethal drugs has dried up as manufacturers, responding to activist pressure, have put them off limits for capital punishment.
The number of death sentences imposed last year marked a 40-year low in the country, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks information about the use of capital punishment in the US.
There have been recent indications that the US Supreme Court might be preparing to take its first broad look at the constitutionality of the death penalty since 1976, perhaps as early as this fall.
However, death penalty supporters might also look to Connecticut to back their position that executions should remain legal in states where it has public and legislative support.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
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