The Hartford Courant is providing extensive coverage of the trial. Today's Courant reports, "Death Row Inmates Continue Fight To Overturn Sentences." It's by Alaine Griffin. Here's the beginning:
The trial challenging the death sentences of five of Connecticut's death-row inmates will shift Tuesday morning to competing experts' analysis of whether race and geography played a role in prosecutors' decisions to seek executions.
The testimony is expected to be complex as attorneys attempt to sort through the methodology, underlying assumptions and statistical theories – key evidence Superior Court Judge Samuel J. Sferrazza will use to decide whether the condemned inmates' death sentences should be overturned.
Though state legislators in April abolished the death penalty for future offenses, the 11 men on death row still face execution. And, there are three pending death-eligible cases, including the case of Jose Jusino, charged with killing his prison cellmate three years ago. Jusino's trial began Monday.
Before the bias trial began, the inmates tried unsuccessfully to raise the issue of whether the death penalty should still apply to those already on death row. Sferrazza said the new claims stemming from the repeal raise legal questions distinct from the unique statistics-based analysis evidence that will be presented in the discrimination trial.
That evidence is expected to come from Stanford Law School professor John Donohue III, whose research has concluded that race and geography do play a factor in capital punishment in Connecticut, bolstering the claims of the black, white and Hispanic death row inmates who say the system is both arbitrary and biased.
Donohue, who used to teach at Yale University, reviewed capital cases in Connecticut from 1973 to 2007, finding that minority defendants whose victims were white were more likely to be sentenced to death than others.
Those facing capital charges in the city of Waterbury, according to Donohue, were at least seven times as likely to be sentenced to death as in other judicial districts. Former Waterbury State's Attorney John A. Connelly has prosecuted six men who were sentenced to death.
The state is being represented by a team of prosecutors from the chief state's attorney's office. They are expected to vigorously challenge Donohue's findings, pointing to evidence they say shows that race and geography did not affect the administration of the death penalty in Connecticut. Their own expert, Stephan Michelson, in his testimony is expected to dispute Donohue's findings, saying his conclusions were flawed and that erroneous inclusions of non-death eligible cases in a Donohue report forced Michelson to alter his own report.
"Death Row Inmates' Hopes Rest On Bias Data," also by Griffin is from the Monday Courant.
When the landmark case that challenges the death sentences of five of Connecticut's 11 death-row inmates resumes Tuesday, testimony will shift to competing experts' analysis of whether race and geography played a role in prosecutors' decisions to seek executions.The testimony is expected to be complex as attorneys attempt to sort through the methodology, underlying assumptions and statistical theories – key evidence Superior Court Judge Samuel J. Sferrazza will use to decide whether the condemned inmates' death sentences should be overturned.
Though state legislators in April abolished the death penalty for future offenses, the 11 men on death row still face execution. And, there are three pending death-eligible cases, including the case of Jose Jusino, charged with killing his prison cellmate three years ago. Jusino's trial began Monday.
"Conn. Court Examines Alleged Death Penalty Bias," is Diane Orson's report from today's edition of NPR Morning Edition. There is audio at the link.
A legal case under way in Connecticut, involving a group of death row inmates, has attracted some national attention. The trial resumes Tuesday and centers on whether there's been race, gender and geographic bias in Connecticut's death penalty cases.
Earlier coverage of the Connecticut trial begins at the link.
Related posts are in the geographic disparity and race category indexes.
Comments