Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Connecticut’s House of Representatives voted on April 11 to abolish the death penalty prospectively, which is another way of saying that the General Assembly will not apply its morals and its legal prescriptions to the Connecticut 11, inmates presently awaiting punishment on Death Row. The abolition bill having passed both houses of the General Assembly, will be made operative upon Governor Dannel Malloy’s signature. The prospective abolition bill is the single most cowardly piece of legislation passed in the last half century, and it gives the lie to every argument made in the General Assembly in favor of abolition. But in the case of the 11 inmates awaiting execution, the bill approved by Mr. Sharkey visits upon them a reciprocal evil. And we would be no less safe, the pro-repeal forces in the General Assembly have repeatedly assured us, if the sentences of the Connecticut 11 had been commuted to life in prison retrospectively. Mr. Sharkey has yet to share with us the moral ...