The ultimate sanction

Some while back I discussed the death penalty here, in response to a couple of atrocious crimes that happened in Connecticut and provoked a lot of controversy. The first person to be executed in the state following the Supreme Court moratorium was a man named Michael Ross, who raped and murdered young women in what is now my neck of the woods as it were, a bit before I moved out here. He asked his attorneys to stop trying to prevent it, in other words he went to his death willingly, evidently preferring it to life in prison. So in that situation one has to ask, what ' s the point? One element of controversy was whether his attorneys should have continued defending him anyway, despite his wishes.The second occasion was the home invasion, rape and murders committed by Stephen Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky. Their actions were sufficiently depraved that I won ' t trouble you by describing them. They were the last people sentenced to death in Connecticut before the legislature eliminated the death penalty, but in order to get the votes they stipulated that existing sentences should be carried out, on the probably correct belief that the public would not want Hayes and Komisarjevsky to be spared. (The survivor, Dr. Stephen Petit whose family was exterminated, advocated vociferously for their execution.) However, the court ruled that in eliminating the death penalty for any future offenses, the legislature could not treat previously sentenced individuals any differently, and the se...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs