CT to abolish death penalty

I imagine many people move from being anti-DP to pro-DP as they get older. My transition was actually in the reverse. I recall listening to debates on the subject in college (in my argumentative writing corses for example), and I tended to side with the pro-DP position. As a matter of 'cruel and unusual punishment', I still believe the DP would be permissible. On the issue of the cost to execute (ie, costing more to execute than to house), it's debatable.

But the issue that really turned me around on the subject was finding out the staggering number of completely innocent people who were sentenced to death, and exonerated years or decades later. Not just a handful, but hundreds upon hundreds. And then to extrapolate this to the thousands who must have already been executed over the years, and the thousands more for whom DNA was never collected or who were convicted on circumstantial evidence and have no chance of reprieve. It is amazing to me that even in cases where DNA was collected, most of the time, it is never even tested due to time and budget constraints.


I have also seen far to many stories of ambitious or ambivalent prosecutors who will flatly deny evidence which clearly exonerates the defendant because they have invested too much in the case to let it go. For some, their pride and politics are more important to them than an innocent man's freedom (or life). In some cases, even when families fought for (and privately paid for) DNA to be tested and it turned out to prove the defendant's innocence, the prosecutor argued to have the evidence suppressed. Such behavior should itself be a crime.


So, while I understand the position of those who still support the DP, politics aside, I think the risks outweigh the rewards. And I'm not sure there will ever be a time when such a punishment can be applied without collateral damage.