"A Trial on Death Row," is the New York Times report by Lincoln Caplan.
An extraordinary trial is scheduled to begin Wednesday in Connecticut, held at the prison housing the state’s death row. The petitioners are inmates sentenced to death for violent felonies, who are seeking to have their sentences reduced to life without parole on the ground that the death penalty in Connecticut is unconstitutional because it has been randomly imposed on a small group of people.
In April, Connecticut became the 17th state to abolish the death penalty and the fifth in five years. But that law does not apply to those already sentenced. The inmates in this case will be presenting evidence compiled by John Donohue, a Stanford law professor, who studied how capital punishment was imposed in every Connecticut murder case from 1973 (when the state passed a death penalty law) to 2007. His analysis dispelled the erroneous claim that only the “worst of the worst” among criminals are given the death penalty. Instead, he found that the penalty has been applied with “arbitrariness and discrimination” based on race and geography, and that death row inmates are indistinguishable from other violent offenders who escaped capital punishment.
The Day publishes the AP filing, "Trial challenging Ct.'s death penalty to begin." It's by Dave Collins.
One of the most unusual trials in recent memory in Connecticut is set to begin this week, when seven of the 11 men on the state's death row will be brought into a makeshift courtroom at a prison in Somers as they challenge the fairness of the death penalty.The inmates are suing the state, alleging racial and geographic biases in how prosecutors seek the death penalty and seeking to have their death sentences overturned. After seven years of legal wrangling, the trial is scheduled to start Wednesday.
"The issue is whether the death penalty in Connecticut has been administered in a discriminatory or arbitrary way," said David Golub, a Stamford attorney representing condemned killer Sedrick Cobb.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed to hold the trial in a vacant housing unit at the Northern Correctional Institution and provide a video feed for the public about 15 miles away at Rockville Superior Court. The inmates will sit at tables in a prison day room with their attorneys, while other tables will be set up for Judge Samuel Sferrazza and prosecutors, according to lawyers in the case and Correction Department officials.
And:
The key evidence for the inmates is a study by Stanford University professor John Donahue, a former Yale University professor who reviewed the nearly 4,700 murders in Connecticut from 1973 to 2007. Among those, Donahue said 205 were death penalty-eligible cases that resulted in a homicide conviction, and defendants in 138 of the 205 murders were charged with capital felony.
The end results of those murder prosecutions were 66 capital felony convictions, nine death sentences and the execution of serial killer Michael Ross in 2005.
Donahue said he found that minority defendants who murder white victims are three times as likely to receive a death sentence as white defendants who murder white victims. He also found that minority defendants who commit death penalty-eligible murders of white victims are six times as likely to receive a death sentence as minority defendants who commit death penalty-eligible murders of minority victims.
The study, which was commissioned by the chief public defender's office, also concluded that Connecticut's capital punishment system was arbitrary and includes geographic biases.
Donahue said that although the death penalty is usually reserved for the "worst of the worst" cases, eight of the nine death sentences affirmed between 1973 and 2007 were not among the 15 most egregious cases. He said death penalty-eligible defendants in Waterbury were sentenced to death at much higher rates than such defendants elsewhere in the state.
"A comprehensive assessment of this process ... reveals a troubling picture," Donahue wrote in the study. "Overall, the state's record of handling death-eligible cases represents a chaotic and unsound criminal justice policy that serves neither deterrence nor retribution."
State prosecutors disagree with the study's findings and deny any biases in the way death penalty cases are pursued.
Earlier coverage of the Connecticut racial bias trial begins at the link. Related posts are in the geographic disparity and race indexes.
Coverage of Connecticut's repeal of the death penalty is also available.
Comments