Should Connecticut abolish the death penalty?

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by James Kellard

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Capital punishment is considered by some to be a clearly "black and white" issue, while many others consider it to be a topic with a great deal of gray area. On one side of the issue, a person who commits particularly heinous crimes deserves to have equal punishment. On the other side, by carrying out state and federally sanctioned executions, allowing the government to decide who should live or die; are we playing God?

Not to mention that the government does not have the best track record when it comes to efficiency. Do we really trust them to get it right every time, particularly when a person's life is on the line? As the 12th century legal scholar Maimonides said, "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death."

Before deciding whether to abolish the death penalty, it is very important to look at it from both sides. There are some valid arguments both for abolishing, as well as continuing capital punishment.

People who commit violent crimes, especially particularly heinous ones, deserve to be punished and I do not think anybody would argue with that. In order for a case to qualify for the death penalty, there generally needs to be aggravating factors. For example, in Connecticut some aggravating factors would be committing an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved murder, use of an assault weapon in the offense, or murdering someone while committing or attempting to commit, or flee from a felony (I.e. murdering a teller in the commission of a bank robbery).

A person in Connecticut can also be executed if they commit a capital felony. Some examples of a capital felony in Connecticut are hiring or acting as a paid hit man, murdering a law enforcement officer, murdering someone while committing first-degree sexual assault, or murdering a child under the age of 16.

One of the situations in which the death penalty seems most warranted, is an individual raping and murdering a child or children. Take Robert James Anderson for example. On June 9, 1992, Robert James Anderson kidnapped five-year-old Audra Ann Reeves. He brought the young girl to his house and after unsuccessfully attempting to rape her, he beat, stabbed, and drowned her before putting her body in a styrofoam ice chest and throwing her in the trash.

During his confession, Anderson blamed the incident on a fight he had with his new wife, in which she told him she wanted him to move out. Anderson was executed in Texas on July 20th, 2006 by lethal injection. Even the strongest opponents of the death penalty could hardly argue that this man deserved to live. Some may even say that his execution was too kind. He tortured and murdered a five-year-old girl before throwing her in the trash, meanwhile, he died quietly laying on a gurney with little to no physical suffering.

On the other side of this issue, there are some very valid arguments as to why the death penalty should be abolished. Several studies have shown that the reinstatement of state sanctioned executions in 1976, has done nothing to effect deterrence. If the reason we execute criminals is for deterrence, this has been shown not to work. If we do it as punishment that is a different story.

While execution may seem like the ultimate punishment, we have to wonder how accurate that is. Consider it for yourself, would you rather spend the rest of your natural life living in what is, for all intents and purposes, a cage, or would you rather have an injection to put you out of your misery? Personally I'd take the injection. Perhaps people who commit these crimes would be suffering more if we let them live.

Some opponents of capital punishment question what right the government has to decide who lives and who dies and what this says about us as a country. The five countries with the highest execution rates in 2008 were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, The United States of America and Pakistan. These five countries accounted for 93 percent of total worldwide executions. Admittedly it does not appear as if we are in the best company.

While this is a perfectly valid argument, the more important question is how do we trust the government to get it right when a person's life is on the line? According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit organization specializing in information and analysis involving capital punishment, 133 people have been released from death row since 1973, after they were proven innocent of the crime they were sentenced to death for. Three people have been released from death row in 2009 alone.

Unfortunately, there are no solid statistics as to how many innocent people have not been so lucky and were executed. The courts generally do not exonerate people after they are already dead and defense attorneys tend to focus on the living. Considering there have been over 100 people on death row found to be wrongly convicted in just over 30 years, one can only imagine how many innocent people were executed in the previous 200 years (take the Salem witch trials for instance).

The fact that innocent people have been sentenced to death for something they did not do, forces us to ask, is it worth it? As Maimonides so eloquently pointed out, are the deaths of one thousand guilty people worth the death of one innocent person? Somebody who would answer yes has to ask, what if that one person was you or a close friend or family member? Would you really be willing to sacrifice yourself or someone you love in order to continue legally executing guilty people? We also have to ask what it means when the state executes an innocent person. Does this mean we are all murderers? The risk just seems to be too much. While those who commit horrible crimes absolutely deserve to be punished severely, it is unquestionably wrong to allow an innocent person to be executed by the state.

The preceding focused on the question of capital punishment at large, but let us look at Connecticut specifically. The House of Representatives already voted to abolish the death penalty. The state Senate and Governor have to agree before it becomes law, giving the 10 people on death row in Connecticut life in prison instead.

The state that executes the most people, by far, in the United States is Texas. Connecticut has only executed one person in the last 49 years. Michael Bruce Ross was executed by lethal injection on May 13, 2005. He was convicted of raping and murdering eight females, between the ages of 14 to 25.

Before this, the last execution in Connecticut was on May 17, 1960, when Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky was given the electric chair, following a string of armed robberies and six murders. Obviously the state of Connecticut is hardly on a killing spree. Should the state abolish the death penalty? Ultimately, that is for the Senate and Governor to decide, but if the bill does not pass in the Senate, or Governor Rell decides to veto; it appears as though the effect would be minimal and for the most part symbolic.

While some states use capital punishment very liberally (Texas has executed over 400 inmates since 1976 and has over 300 currently on death row), Connecticut seems to reserve execution for only the worst criminals. There are also protections in place in Connecticut to protect the rights of the defendant. If someone was under 18 at the time of the crime, mentally handicapped, was an accessory with minimal participation, or could not have reasonably foreseen the results of his or her conduct; they cannot be sentenced to death. Not to mention that besides the fact that defendants can appeal their conviction, the state Supreme Court automatically reviews death sentences.

Abolishing the death penalty in Connecticut would be ideal, ensuring that no innocent person will slip through the cracks and probably causing the worst criminals to suffer even more by forcing them to live out their lives in prison never to see freedom again. Despite this, a state that has executed only one person, a rapist and serial killer, in almost five decades and currently has ten people on death row; should not be admonished should they decide not to abolish capital punishment. There are other states who wield execution much more freely. Those states, or the federal government itself, should be the current focus of death penalty opponents.

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