Dear Governor Rell:

We, the undersigned members of the Black and Latino Caucus, join to ask you to reconsider your opposition to replacing Connecticut’s death sentence with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Nationally, the death penalty is a travesty. The racial disparity among the executed is appalling. This, combined with the procedural errors and human bias that have allowed innocent people to sit on death row for years, makes the death penalty monumental in its risk and racist in its application.

Since re-establishing the death penalty in 1973, Connecticut has not encountered these problems because the State has not used it. This does not mean we are immune to these problems, it just means they have yet to come to pass in Connecticut. Our opposition to the death penalty should not be misinterpreted as sympathy for the offenders. Rather, we seek to eliminate a problem that is a stain upon our society. These are among the reasons we support replacing the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole:

• Capital punishment is a deeply flawed system and Connecticut can be at the forefront eliminating it nationally. In state after state, studies have shown that defendants whose victims are white are far more likely to get the death penalty. This is not surprising when 98% of District Attorneys, in states that have the death penalty, are white. Additionally, since 1973 over 100 innocent people have been released from death row.

• Capital punishment is bad policy. There is no evidence that the death penalty is a deterrent to future crime. Every tax dollar the State spends on the decades long appeals process for those on death row is a tax dollar wasted.

• It is hypocritical and immoral of the State to kill in the name of preserving life. While most Western countries have abandoned the death penalty, the United States joins such countries as China, Iran and Sudan in executing its citizens.

• The death penalty brings renewed notoriety to criminals and their crimes decades after they have faded from the public eye. Life without parole would remove heinous criminals from the spotlight for good.

“If not remedied, the scandalous state of our present system of capital punishment will cast a pall of shame over our society for years to come. We cannot let it continue.”

The State cannot gamble with life and death. Capital punishment is inherently imperfect due to the imperfections of human judgment. We urge you to accept any legislation the General Assembly might pass to eliminate the death penalty and its inherent flaws from the State of Connecticut.

Sincerely,