States With and Without the Death Penalty

STATES WITH THE DEATH PENALTY (31)			Other State Information: State by State Information Summary of State Statutes Execution Information Sentencing Information Clemency Process by State Murder Rates by State
Alabama Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Delaware Florida Georgia Idaho Indiana Kansas Kentucky	Louisiana Mississippi Missouri Montana Nevada New Hampshire North Carolina Ohio Oklahoma Oregon	Pennsylvania South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Washington Wyoming ALSO - U.S. Gov't - U.S. Military
STATES WITHOUT THE DEATH PENALTY (19) (YEAR ABOLISHED IN PARENTHESES)
Alaska (1957) Connecticut (2012) Hawaii (1957) Illinois (2011) Iowa (1965) Maine (1887) Maryland (2013) Massachusetts (1984)	Michigan (1846) Minnesota (1911) Nebraska** (2015) New Jersey (2007) New Mexico* (2009) New York (2007)# North Dakota (1973) Rhode Island (1984)^	Vermont (1964) West Virginia (1965) Wisconsin (1853) ALSO Dist. of Columbia (1981)

* In March 2009, New Mexico voted to abolish the death penalty. However, the repeal was not retroactive, leaving two people on the state's death row.

** In May 2015, Nebraska voted to abolish the death penalty. The status of the 10 inmates on death row is uncertain at this time. A petition has been submitted to suspend the repeal and put it to a voter referendum.

^ In 1979, the Supreme Court of Rhode Island held that a statute making a death sentence mandatory for someone who killed a fellow prisoner was unconstitutional. The legislature removed the statute in 1984.

# In 2004, the New York Court of Appeals held that a portion of the state's death penalty law was unconstitutional. In 2007, they ruled that their prior holding applied to the last remaining person on the state's death row. The legislature has voted down attempts to restore the statute.

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CONNECTICUT SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN DEATH PENALTY

On August 13, 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court (4-3) held that the state's death penalty was in violation of the state's constitution, especially in light of the state legislature's prospective repeal of the death penalty in 2012. The ruling means that the death sentences of those who were not covered by the legislative repeal will now have those sentences reduced to life. Excerpts from the main opinion follow:

"[W]e 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."

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‘‘'[W]e have little more than an illusion of a death penalty in this country. ... Whatever purposes the death penalty is said to serve— deterrence, retribution, assuaging the pain suffered by victims’ families—these purposes are not served by the system as it now operates.'" (quoting Judge Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Cir.)

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"In concluding that the death pen- alty is unconstitutional, however, we recognize that the legal and moral legitimacy of any future executions would be undermined by the ever present risk that an innocent person will be wrongly executed."

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"In prospectively abolishing the death penalty, the legislature did not simply express the will of the people that it no longer makes sense to maintain the costly and unsatisfying charade of a capital punishment scheme in which no one ever receives the ultimate punishment. Public Act 12-5 also held a mirror up to Connecticut’s long, troubled history with capital punishment: the steady replacement by more progressive forms of punishment; the increasing inability to achieve legitimate penological purposes; 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. Because such a system fails to comport with our abiding freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, we hold that capital punishment, as currently applied, violates the constitution of Connecticut."

(Connecticut v. Santiago, SC 17413, Aug. 13, 2015).

States With and Without the Death Penalty

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CONNECTICUT SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN DEATH PENALTY