From the Hartford Courant Editorial Board:
After another painful and painstaking recounting of the 2007 Cheshire murders, a jury has sentenced the second defendant in the case to death. Joshua Komisarjevsky will now join Steven Hayes on death row.
The case, however, is far from over. There’ll be endless reviews and appeals, to the point where both men are more likely to die of old age before they are executed. Did these agonizing and expensive trials accomplish anything?
The two men were willing to plead to sentences of life in prison without possibility of parole. Because of the lengthy delays built into Connecticut’s death penalty, they will most likely serve life without parole. The trial becomes just a ritual in Connecticut death penalty cases, a kabuki play about justice instead of actual justice.
Streamline It Or End It?
Some say the answer is to streamline the death penalty, to make it work faster. But there is a serious question of whether the system can be made to move more quickly, to any meaningful degree. When the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, it encouraged automatic review and appeal of both the conviction and the sentence. This must happen, lest society make an irreversible mistake. It invariably takes time.
We believe the better answer is to repeal the death penalty as immoral and bad public policy. Speaking at Wesleyan University last year, Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel, who lost his parents and sister in the Holocaust, said moral societies should not be the agents of death. We aspire to be a moral society.
When the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, it was with the hope that it could be administered impartially. There is much evidence that this hope has not been met.
Studies in Maryland, North Carolina and New Jersey in the past decade, cited by the Death Penalty Information Project, found unsettling evidence that killers of white victims are more likely to be sentenced to death than killers of nonwhite victims.
Also, criminal trials are not foolproof: 139 inmates have been released from death row since the mid-1970s because of evidence of their innocence–and for a few others, the evidence came too late.
In addition, the death penalty is hugely expensive. Studies across the country show the costs of trials, appeals and death rows are much higher than simple life without parole, For example, a New Jersey report concluded that the state’s death penalty had cost taxpayers $253 million from 1983 to 2005 over the costs that would have been incurred had the state utilized a sentence of life without parole instead. The state abolished the death penalty in 2007.
Also, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that insane or mentally retarded people cannot be executed. This opens another gray area. Can we tell with certainty when a person is mentally competent enough to be killed?
No Closure
Perhaps all of these objections could be laid aside if the death penalty brought relief or closure to the families of victims. But earlier this year more than two dozen family members of murder victims came to the Capitol to support a bill that would have repealed the death penalty, and 76 relatives signed a letter backing the bill. As one said, the process results in notoriety for the murderer and “years of suffering and uncertainty for the families left behind.” The bill failed to pass.
In the end, the death penalty is about revenge, an understandable response to the killing of a loved one. But sometimes the state has to stand between the raw emotion of the victim’s loved ones and greater good of society. Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber so concluded two weeks ago when he announced he was halting all future executions. He said the death penalty “is morally wrong and unjustly administered.”
That’s now the philosophy in 16 states and 133 countries, and should be in Connecticut as well. The Cheshire trials are over. Repeal the death penalty.
I am no fan of the death penalty. As we have seen, innocent people have been sentenced to death and thankfully the truth came out before they were killed.
I am against life without parole if these killers are allowed to mix with the general prison population and basically have a social life in prison. I believe killers should be sentenced to life in a maximum security prison where they are locked up for 23 hours a day and allowed to exercise by themselves for an hour.
*** These two turds have never been productive in society & never will; they are for dying! Whether it’s soon or in the future, they’ll have plenty of time to think about their criminal deeds in prison before meeting the grim reaper, no? *** JUSTICE FOR THE VICTIMS ***
What a waste of taxpayers’ money and continuing suffering for the family of the victims. If someone is convicted with the death penalty, here is what should happen, simple. The convicted should have a week to say farewell to everyone That is more than the victims received. The following week they should be in one of the area hospitals in an operating room. The victim’s family and witnesses should be in the observation room. The convicts should then give up their life and organs to contribute something to society. The are thousands of people waiting for eyes, hearts, livers, lungs, kidneys, etc, etc, etc. There should not be one dollar spent on these scum of the earth. The justice served could improve the quality of life for countless thousands. It would also put an end to their existence immediately. This should be the law of the land. When there is absolutely no question of guilt, no DNA or forensic issues, end it and improve other people’s lives. Not one dollar should be spent. Not one!
Not one red cent of taxpayers’ dollars should be spent keeping murderers alive, especially those convicted of having murdered multiple victims, as in the Cheshire case. What kind of mercy was shown to that woman and her daughters and what kind of bitter memories will the doctor have to live with? These men were ruthless and heartless, both guilty beyond a shadow of doubt and there is no place for them in civilized society. It took four long years for the trial to culminate in a guilty verdict, so now what should happen–keep them alive via appeals for another four or more years? I say not, delve out their sentence immediately.
*** Death Penalty cases should be a 3 strikes & out speedy process, 1st the trial, 2nd the state appeal, 3rd the fed appeal. Total 7 year process in all with automatic organ donation to state. *** Wishful Thinking in a Perfect World Inc. ***
I can’t support the death penalty. It is an imperfect process. The article says 139 people have been released from death rows since the ’70s. No hard information offered on the number of innocents who were put to death. So long as there exists a possibility an innocent person can wrongfully be put to death we have no business imposing that penalty.