Connecticut is on the verge. Last week the Joint Judiciary Committee voted 24 to 19 on legislation to repeal the state's death penalty. Next up is the Senate floor vote - and that vote could vote as early as next week.
If you live in Connecticut, now is the time to contact your legislators and tell them to support repeal of the death penalty.
If you don't live in Connecticut, reach out to anyone you know who does and urge them to get involved. Send this link www.ejusa.org/act/CT to your friends in Connecticut and post it on Facebook and Twitter.
Like everywhere else, Connecticut's death penalty is a colossal failure. It's applied unfairly. It doesn't make anyone any safer. And it fails to meet the needs of the families of murder victims.
“I'm so happy that the committee has listened to what we, murder victim family members, have been telling them about how the death penalty hurts us and subjects us to years of pain,”
Those are the words of Elizabeth Brancato, talking aobut the judiciary committee's yes vote. Elizabeth's mother was murdered in 1979.
Catherine Ednie, whose brother was the victim of a mass murder in 1995, says the death penalty is:
“It’s a system of smoke and mirrors, a system where the state tells a grieving family sorry, the murder that destroyed your family was not egregious enough for the death penalty. It’s a system where the prosecution first finds a case of mass murder egregious enough, and then wakes up one morning to find that it’s not egregious enough, a system where even if there is a death penalty conviction, it is most likely not followed through with an execution.”
A state has repealed the death penalty every other year for the last five years.
It’s time we changed the pattern – to repeal every year. Connecticut is our chance.
The state's death penalty has been hanging by a thread for a long time.
In 2009 the state legislature passed a repeal bill and it would be law today if it hadn't been vetoed by then-Governor Jodi Rell.
Last year so many of the ingredients to pass repeal were in place that the media was calling it a "done deal" but at the last minute, the legislature decided to postpone repealing the death penalty until 2012.
Now it's 2012 and now is the time. http://www.ejusa.org/...