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executions
Citing 'Unjust' Death Sentence, Alabama Gov. Grants Clemency to Sonny Burton
"The state was set to execute Sonny for a crime he didn't commit, but tens of thousands of people nationwide demanded justice—and our voices were heard," said the ACLU.
Mar 10, 2026
Amid nationwide public outcry, Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey—a staunch supporter of capital punishment—on Tuesday spared a death row inmate who did not kill the man for whose murder he was sentenced to die and was scheduled for execution on Thursday.
“I firmly believe that the death penalty is just punishment for society’s most heinous offenders, as shown by the 25 executions I have presided over as governor," Ivey said in a statement. "In order to ensure the continued viability of the death penalty, however, I also believe that a government’s most consequential action must be administered fairly and proportionately."
"Doug Battle was brutally murdered by Derrick DeBruce while shopping in an auto parts store. But DeBruce was ultimately sentenced to life without parole," the governor continued. "Charles Burton did not shoot the victim, did not direct the triggerman to shoot the victim, and had already left the store by the time the shooting occurred. Yet Mr. Burton was set to be executed while DeBruce was allowed to live out his life in prison."
"I cannot proceed in good conscience with the execution of Mr. Burton under such disparate circumstances," Ivey added. "I believe it would be unjust for one participant in this crime to be executed while the participant who pulled the trigger was not. To be clear, Mr. Burton will not be eligible for parole and will rightfully spend the remainder of his life behind bars for his role in the robbery that led to the murder of Doug Battle. He will now receive the same punishment as the triggerman."
Burton—who is 75 years old and goes by the name Sonny—has been on Alabama’s death row since 1992, a year after Battle's murder.
"I didn’t kill no one, true enough, but I made a mistake by being part of the crime,” Burton told CNN in an interview last week, anticipating his execution. “I made a mistake, and it seems like all my friends have forgave me. I hope that my friends will remember me and remember that I was a real friend, a good friend.”
While Republican Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall condemned Ivey for sparing a "murderer," both death penalty supporters and opponents welcomed the commutation.
BREAKING: Alabama Governor Kay Ivey commuted the death sentence of Sonny Burton.The state was set to execute Sonny for a crime he didn't commit, but tens of thousands of people nationwide demanded justice — and our voices were heard.
— ACLU (@aclu.org) March 10, 2026 at 9:18 AM
“It’s absolutely not fair. You don’t execute someone who did not pull the trigger,” Priscilla Townsend, one of three jurors in Burton's trial who asked Ivey for clemency, told the Associated Press, adding that she supports executing "the worst of the worst."
Tori Battle, Doug Battle's daughter, had also pleaded for clemency for Burton.
"No one from the state has ever sat with me to explain why Alabama believes it must execute a man who did not kill my father," Battle wrote in an article published last December in the Montgomery Advertiser. "My love for my father does not require another death, especially one that defies reason."
Laura Burton, executive director of the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty, said in a statement Tuesday: "We are grateful that Gov. Ivey recognized that Charles 'Sonny' Burton should not be executed. The death penalty process is deeply flawed when someone who was not present for the killing faces execution, while the person who committed the murder does not. It is uplifting to see that more and more governors across the ideological spectrum are recognizing problems with death penalty cases."
Last November, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Still—also a staunch death penalty advocate—granted clemency to Tremane Wood with just minutes to spare before his scheduled execution for a murder his late brother confessed to committing.
Last year, Ivey also commuted the death sentence of Robin “Rocky” Myers to life in prison without parole, citing serious doubts about his guilt.
There are still 155 people on Alabama's death row, according to the state Department of Corrections. The state has executed five people since the beginning of 2025—one by lethal injection and four by nitrogen gas, a method rejected by veterinarians for euthanizing animals and condemned by United Nations human rights experts as possible torture.
Demetrius Minor, executive director of the death penalty abolition group Conservatives Concerned, said Tuesday that “we want to thank Gov. Ivey for granting clemency for Charles 'Sonny' Burton."
"This brings tremendous relief to his family and so many across the country," Minor added. "Conservatives know that government power can be abused and should not be used to execute someone who was not in the building when the murder was committed. Gov. Ivey acted on these conservative principles."
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Amid Global Calls to End Capital Punishment, US Set to Execute 7 Men This Month
"We won’t give up until the death penalty is abolished everywhere," said Amnesty International on World Day Against the Death Penalty. "Change is possible."
Oct 10, 2025
Human rights defenders marked World Day Against the Death Penalty on Friday by renewing pleas to end capital punishment—calls that came amid a surge in US executions and the Trump administration's extrajudicial high-seas massacres of alleged drug traffickers.
"The death penalty does little to deter crime or serve victims," the United Nations said on social media. "It has no place in the 21st century."
Noting that two-thirds of the world's countries have abolished capital punishment, the UN human rights office asserted that "it's time to end it—everywhere, for everyone."
"You can free a prisoner. You can clear a conviction. But you can’t correct an execution," the office said. "Innocent people are sentenced to death, in many regions of the world. And those who are executed are rarely the powerful. It’s the poor, the marginalized, those with the fewest means to defend themselves."
"The death penalty doesn’t prevent crime," it added. "It doesn’t deliver justice. It only repeats violence, in the name of the law."
We must end the death penalty, once and for all.On this World Day Against the Death Penalty, add your name to the growing number of people calling for an end to capital punishment.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) October 10, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Amnesty International said on social media, "Over the past year, executions have significantly increased in countries such as Singapore, Kuwait, Iran, and the USA, while people continue to be executed at an alarming rate in Saudi Arabia."
"Among these rises, some governments have shown renewed determination to use this cruel punishment as a tool of repression and control," Amnesty continued. "They continue to ignore international human rights law.
The group noted on a hopeful note that "the number of countries resorting to the death penalty is decreasing.”
"We won’t give up until the death penalty is abolished everywhere," Amnesty added. "Change is possible."
European Parliament Human Rights Subcommittee Chair Mounir Satouri reaffirmed lawmakers' "absolute opposition to the death penalty, under all circumstances and without exception."
"The death penalty constitutes a cruel punishment that fundamentally denies human dignity and is incompatible with the right to life and with the prohibition of torture," he said.
“Today, more than two-thirds of all countries have either abolished the death penalty in law or no longer implement it in practice. 113 countries had abolished the death penalty in law by the end of 2024," Satouri noted. "I urge the remaining 55 states that continue to impose or carry out death sentences to establish a moratorium as an initial step toward its complete abolition."
“It has been proven that the death penalty does not deter crime and that its imposition disproportionately affects vulnerable groups," he added. "Moreover, in today's more authoritarian global environment, the death penalty and assassinations sponsored by authoritarian regimes are used as a political tool against political opponents, independent journalists, and human rights defenders."
Those remarks came as US President Donald Trump faces condemnation at home and abroad for ordering a series of extrajudicial assassinations of what his administration claims are drug traffickers transporting narcotics in small boats in the Caribbean Sea off the Venezuelan coast.
Trump—who oversaw a resurgence of federal executions during his first term—signed an executive order on his first day back in the White House affirming capital punishment as "an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes," despite study after study showing it does not deter criminal activity.
Capital punishment abolitionists earlier this year denounced US Attorney General Pam Bondi's decision to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024. More recently, Bondi has also ominously threatened to take the "same approach" to anti-fascist protesters as the administration has taken against drug cartels.
However, human rights defenders are currently most alarmed by a surge in executions in Republican-controlled states, where Indiana death row inmate Roy Lee Ward—who was killed by lethal injection on Friday—was the first of five scheduled executions in the coming week.
Next Tuesday, Lance Shockley in Missouri and Samuel Lee Smithers in Florida are set to be executed. Smithers would be the 14th person to be killed this year under the direction of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose expansion of the state's capital punishment regime has raised constitutional concerns.
On Wednesday, Charles Ray Crawford is scheduled to be executed in Mississippi, while Arizona is set to put Richard Djerf to death on October 17.
In a rare reprieve, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday blocked next week's scheduled execution of Robert Roberson—who was convicted of murdering his 2-year-old daughter on the basis of scientifically debunked "shaken baby syndrome"—by sending his case back to court.
Update: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Robert Roberson a stay of execution October 9, a week before he was set to be killed. A lower court will now reconsider Roberson’s case.
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— Texas Observer (@texasobserver.org) October 9, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Two more executions—Anthony Todd Boyd in Alabama and Norman Mearle Grim in Florida—are planned for later this month.
There have been 35 executions in the United States so far this year, up from 25 in 2024 and the most since 2017, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Noting that October is "Respect Life Month" in the United States, Catholic Mobilizing Network executive director Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy told Vatican News Friday that “it's a stark contrast to honoring all human life that we see such an affront to the dignity of the human person."
"We need to value the dignity of every human person," Vaillancourt added. "That includes people who are sitting on death row. So we will not give up this fight. And the progress that we've made has been hard-won. We will move forward and continue in order to end the death penalty in the United States.”
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South Carolina AG: Freddie Owens to Be Executed Despite Key Witness' Bombshell Claim
The witness—who claims he falsely identified Owens as the killer because he feared for his life—said that barring a stay, the condemned man "will die for a crime that he did not commit."
Sep 19, 2024
Barring an unlikely 11th-hour reprieve from South Carolina's governor or U.S. Supreme Court, correctional officials are set to carry out the state's first execution in 13 years after its attorney general brushed off a key prosecution witness' bombshell claim that the convicted man did not commit the murder for which he is condemned to die.
Freddie Owens—who legally changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah while imprisoned—was convicted and sentenced to die by lethal injection for the shooting death of convenience store cashier Irene Graves, a 41-year-old mother of three, during a 1997 robbery.
Although there was no forensic evidence linking the then-19-year-old man to the murder, state prosecutors relied upon the testimony of co-defendant Steven Golden, who pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Owens as part of a plea deal to spare his own life.
On Wednesday Golden filed an affidavit in the South Carolina Supreme Court in which he declared that he lied about the identity of Graves' killer.
"If this court does not grant a stay, Freddie will die for a crime he did not commit," he wrote.
However, on Thursday the state's highest court rejected Owens' bid.
"Freddie Owens is not the person who shot Irene Graves at the Speedway on November 1, 1997," Golden's filing stated. "Freddie was not present when I robbed the Speedway that day."
"The detectives told me they knew Freddie was with me when I robbed the Speedway," wrote Golden, who was 18 years old at the time of the crime. "They told me I might as well make a statement against Freddie because he already told his side to everyone and they were just trying to get my side of the story."
"I was scared that I would get the death penalty if I didn't make a statement," he continued. "I signed a waiver of rights form and then signed a statement on November 11, 1997."
"In that statement, I substituted Freddie for the person who was really with me in the Speedway that night," Golden claimed. "I did that because I knew that's what the police wanted me to say, and also because I thought the real shooter or his associates might kill me if I named him to the police. I am still afraid of that. But Freddie was actually not there."
Golden—who said he did not name the person who he says killed Graves for fear of his life—added: "I'm coming forward now because I know Freddie's execution date is September 20 and I don't want Freddie to be executed for something he didn't do. This has weighed heavily on my mind and I want to have a clear conscience."
The office of Republican South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson responded to Golden's affidavit on Thursday, calling his claim "inherently suspect" and stating that he "has now made a sworn statement that is contrary to his multiple other sworn statements over 20 years."
The attorney general's statement came after a federal judge on Wednesday declined to halt Owens' execution over his legal team's concerns about the provenance of South Carolina's supply of pentobarbital, which is used in lethal injections.
South Carolina unofficially paused executions in 2011 as lethal injection drugs became increasingly difficult to obtain because pharmaceutical companies enacted bans on their use for capital punishment. The state subsequently passed a law protecting the identity of drug suppliers, resulting in renewed stocks.
Additionally, the state Supreme Court ruled in July that executions by firing squad and electrocution do not violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, validating a law signed in 2021 by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster that forces condemned inmates to choose between the two methods of execution at a time when lethal injection drugs were still scarce.
Anti-death penalty campaigners on Wednesday submitted a petition with more than 10,000 signatures asking McMaster to grant Owen clemency.
Although the number of U.S. executions has been steadily decreasing from 85 in 2000 to 24 last year, a flurry of impending state killings has raised alarm among human rights activists. Amnesty International says that in addition to Owens, seven men are scheduled to be put to death in the coming month.
"No government should give itself the power to execute people," Amnesty said Thursday on social media. "It is past time for the U.S. to align with other countries that no longer carry out this cruel and inhuman punishment."
A 2014 study determined that at least 4% of people on U.S. death rows were likely innocent.
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After Missouri Executes Brian Dorsey, Cori Bush Says Abolish Death Penalty
His case, the congresswoman said, "demonstrates the systemic rot of our criminal legal system, which not only fails to prevent violence but actually enables violence itself."
Apr 10, 2024
Democratic U.S. Congresswoman Cori Bush renewed her demand for an end to the death penalty nationwide after her home state of Missouri executed 52-year-old Brian Dorsey on Tuesday evening.
"There is no place in a humane society for state violence. Gov. Mike Parson could have saved Brian Dorsey's life by granting clemency, but he chose to uphold his legacy as the 'Deadly Governor' by denying Mr. Dorsey mercy," Bush said in a statement.
Bush and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) had written to Parson last week urging the Republican to spare Dorsey's life.
Others who recently tried to prevent Dorsey's execution included family members, five of the jurors who sentenced him to death, over 70 current and former correctional officers, and former Missouri Supreme Court Judge Michael Wolff, who previously upheld his sentence.
The right-wing U.S. Supreme Court also declined to intervene. Dorsey was injected with a single dose of pentobarbital at the state prison in Bonne Terre and pronounced dead at 6:11 pm local time, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
"Dorsey took a few deep breaths as the drug was injected, then several shallow, quick breaths," The Associated Press reported Tuesday. "At one point he raised his head from the pillow and blinked hard. After several seconds, all movement stopped."
Based on advice from private counsel hired by the Missouri State Public Defender to defend him, Dorsey pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for killing his cousin, Sarah Bonnie, and her husband, Benjamin Bonnie, at their home on December 23, 2006.
"Had counsel investigated and completed an expert evaluation of their client, they would have learned that Mr. Dorsey was not guilty of first-degree murder, as he was neurologically incapable of deliberation," a lawyer for Dorsey wrote in a recent legal filing.
Bush—who is among dozens of congressional Democrats who have advocated against capital punishment—expressed alarm that Dorsey was killed "despite serious concerns about his state of mind when he committed the offense and the legal representation he was provided."
His case, she said, "demonstrates the systemic rot of our criminal legal system, which not only fails to prevent violence but actually enables violence itself."
"We are so much more than our worst mistakes, and not a single one of us deserves to die because of them," the congresswoman added. "We must refuse to allow another life to be taken by our government. We must abolish the death penalty."
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Top US Nitrogen Gas Producers Ban Use in Executions
"Drug manufacturers don't want their medicines diverted and misused in torturous executions and the makers of nitrogen gas share the same objection: They do not want their products to be used to kill," said one campaigner.
Mar 11, 2024
Three of the leading U.S. manufacturers of medical-grade nitrogen gas said this week that they will not allow their products to be used in executions, a move that came after Louisiana approved the controversial capital punishment method recently used to kill an Alabama prisoner who appeared to be in agony before he died.
Airgas—owned by the French company Air Liquide—along with Air Products, and Matheson Gas told The Guardian that they are banning the use of their nitrogen gas products in the previously untested execution method used to cause death by hypoxia, or deprivation of oxygen to vital tissues.
Veterinarians consider nitrogen gas unethical for euthanizing animals and United Nations human rights experts have asserted that the execution technique may violate international anti-torture law.
"Airgas has not, and will not, supply nitrogen or other inert gases to induce hypoxia for the purpose of human execution," the company said.
Matheson Gas told The Guardian that use of its products in executions is "not consistent with our company values," while Air Products told the U.K.-based newspaper that it has established "prohibited end uses for our products, which includes the use of any of our industrial gas products for the intentional killing of any person (including nitrogen hypoxia)."
Four states—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma—have approved nitrogen gas for use in executions. Last week, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed legislation passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature expanding execution methods to include the electric chair and nitrogen hypoxia. This, despite the agonizing execution in January of 58-year-old Kenneth Smith, who was killed by the state of Alabama by nitrogen hypoxia on January 25 after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last-ditch appeal.
Rev. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser to U.S. death row inmates, witnessed Smith's killing, which he described as "horrific and cruel." Hood and other witnesses said Smith convulsed violently for several minutes while he was strapped to a gurney and forced to breathe nitrogen gas through a mask. Even prison guards were taken by surprise as the gurney shook and Smith struggled for his life.
Alabama officials had claimed that nitrogen hypoxia is "perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised."
States have sought alternative means of killing condemned prisoners—including nitrogen gas and firing squads—ever since the European Union banned the sale and export of lethal injection drugs in 2011.
Maya Foa, co-executive director of the anti-death penalty group Reprieve, told The Guardian that "drug manufacturers don't want their medicines diverted and misused in torturous executions and the makers of nitrogen gas share the same objection: They do not want their products to be used to kill."
"States which claim that the lethal injection or gas inhalation are 'humane' methods of execution are merely seeking to mask what it means for a state to forcibly put someone to death," Foa added. "The makers of these products see through the lie and naturally want nothing to do with it."
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US Supreme Court Refuses to Stop Alabama Nitrogen Gas Execution
"The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, and we urge Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to use her clemency power to stop the execution of Kenneth Smith before it's too late," said one group.
Jan 24, 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday denied an application to stop the execution of a man on Alabama's death row who is set to become the first person in the country to be killed with nitrogen gas in a method rejected by veterinarians for euthanizing animals and condemned by United Nations human rights experts as possible torture.
The justices rejected assertions by lawyers representing 58-year-old Kenneth Smith—who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett—that execution by the untested method of suffocation with nitrogen gas violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment."
The attorneys' argument was based largely on the fact that Smith survived a botched attempt to execute him by lethal injection in November 2022.
Smith's petition for a writ of certiorari asked: "Does a second attempt to execute a condemned person following a single, cruelly willful attempt to execute that same person violate the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments under the Eighth and 14th amendments to the United States Constitution?"
A separate challenge by Smith to the use of nitrogen gas in his execution is pending before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Two other states, Mississippi and Oklahoma, have approved the use of nitrogen gas for executions. States have scrambled to find alternative means of killing condemned inmates after the European Union banned the sale and export of lethal injection drugs in 2011.
Earlier this month, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned that the U.S. may be violating the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by allowing Smith's execution by nitrogen asphyxia.
Shamdasani noted that the American Veterinary Medical Association recommends sedating animals before euthanizing them with nitrogen—a step that is not included in Alabama's protocol.
In addition to concerns over the method of Smith's impending execution, advocates have also pointed to flaws in his sentencing process. The jury that convicted him in 1996 voted 11-1 to recommend a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, but a judge invoked a since-outlawed rule to override the jurors.
Rights groups urged Alabama's Republican governor to halt Smith's execution—a move she declined in 2022.
"The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, and we urge Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to use her clemency power to stop the execution of Kenneth Smith before it's too late," Amnesty International implored Wednesday.
Abraham Bonowitz, co-founder of the abolitionist group Death Penalty Action, called Wednesday "a shameful day for our country."
"The discussion that is missing in all of this hubbub around nitrogen hypoxia is the mental torture of a second execution attempt," he added. "That, and the fact that if Kenny Smith were on trial today, he could not be sentenced to death at all because his jury was not unanimous regarding his sentence. Jury overrides were outlawed in Alabama in 2017. Alabama's capital punishment system as a whole is broken and cannot be trusted to get it right."
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2015: When Global Governments Trampled Human Rights in Name of National Security
Rights 'are being treated with utter contempt by many governments around the world'
Feb 24, 2016
Governments worldwide in 2015 capitalized on supposed national security threats to trample over human rights.
That's Amnesty International's assessment of global human rights in its latest report.
"Your rights are in jeopardy: they are being treated with utter contempt by many governments around the world," said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
Driving some of the government attacks on human rights are "misguided reactions... to national security threats," including "the crushing of civil society, the right to privacy and the right to free speech; and outright attempts to make human rights dirty words, packaging them in opposition to national security, law and order and 'national values.' Governments have even broken their own laws in this way," he continued.
"Millions of people are suffering enormously at the hands of states and armed groups, while governments are shamelessly painting the protection of human rights as a threat to security, law and order or national 'values.'"
Looking at abuses "by the numbers," the watchdog group found that:
- At least 122 countries tortured or otherwise ill-treated people;
- At least 30 or more countries illegally forced refugees to return to countries where they would be in danger;
- Over 60 million people were displaced from their homes;
- At least 113 countries arbitrarily restricted freedom of expression and the press, and
- At least 156 human rights defenders died in detention or were killed.
In addition to rights and rights defenders being under attack, so "are the laws and the system that protect them," Shetty said.
The new report covers a wide range of abuses, such as Ireland's restrictions on and criminalization of abortion and Australia's disproportionate jailing of Indigenous people and its denial of rights to asylum-seekers.
The United States and some of its allies fared poorly as well.
Saudi Arabia continued its crackdown on freedom of expression and association, locked up human rights defenders, and tortured prisoners. Women also faced discrimination by law and lacked protection from sexual and other violence.
Israel continued its "military blockade of Gaza and therefore collective punishment of the 1.8 million inhabitants there."
The UK repealed its Human Rights Act and pushed forth surveillance laws. "The UK is setting a dangerous precedent to the world on human rights," said Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen.
And Egypt arrested thousands "in a ruthless crackdown in the name of national security."
As for rights abuses in the U.S., the report states:
There was no accountability nor remedy for crimes under international law committed in the secret detention program operated by the CIA. Scores of detainees remained in indefinite military detention at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, while military trial proceedings continued in a handful of cases. Concern about the use of isolation in state and federal prisons and the use of force in policing continued. Twenty-seven men and one woman were executed during the year.
"President Obama has often said the right thing but failed to turn his rhetoric into an agenda that makes human rights, in fact, a national priority," said Margaret Huang, interim executive director of Amnesty International USA.
While numerous abuses are cataloged, Shetty stresses in the foreward that the report "cannot convey the full human misery of the topical crises of this last year, notably the refugee crisis--even now exacerbated in this northern winter. In such a situation, protecting and strengthening systems of human rights and civilian protection cannot be seen as optional.
"It is literally a matter of life and death."
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Connecticut Abolishes Death Penalty, Bans Further Executions
State's Supreme Court ruled that death penalty 'no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency'
Aug 13, 2015
Connecticut's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state's ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the planned executions of 11 men on death row, thereby abolishing all capital punishment in the state.
The 4-3 decision came three years after the state passed a law that repealed the death penalty but did not spare those already sentenced to die.
"Upon careful consideration of the defendant's claims in light of the governing constitutional principles and Connecticut's unique historical and legal landscape, we are persuaded that, following its prospective abolition, this state's death penalty no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and no longer serves any legitimate penological purpose," Justice Richard Palmer wrote for the majority.
"For these reasons, execution of those offenders who committed capital felonies before April 25, 2012, would violate the state constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment," he continued.
The court's decision came in response to an appeal by Eduardo Santiago, a man on death row in Connecticut. While public defenders represented him, the ACLU and its Connecticut chapter filed separate amicus briefs to support his case.
Dan Barrett, the legal director of the Connecticut ACLU, told Common Dreams, "We are overjoyed at the ruling because it once and for all declares that killing prisoners is not a part of justice in Connecticut."
The court concluded that the death penalty violates the state's constitution because of: "the freakishness with which the sentence of death is imposed; the rarity with which it is carried out; and the racial, ethnic, and socio-economic biases that likely are inherent in any discretionary death penalty system."
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