When serial killer Michael Ross was put to death in May of 2005, Connecticut became the first New England state to carry out a death sentence in more than forty years.
At the time, the spectacle of a tiny, deep blue state dispatching a convicted murderer via lethal injection gave rise to the usual hand-wringing and no small amount of curiosity. I mean, let’s face it, Connecticut ain’t exactly Alabama.
(Credit: Bob Englehart - Hartford Courant)
The Christian Science Monitor took up the baton and ran with it:
New England’s resistance to the death penalty stems in part from having the country’s lowest murder rate, says Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Experts also cite its liberalism overall and the impact of its renowned universities.
Yet some in Connecticut worry that with this execution, that distinction would no longer hold as firmly. “It can no longer call itself an enlightened state,” says Paula Montonye, a lawyer who represents some of the state’s death row inmates. The execution “is a stamp of approval on killing. It creates an atmosphere of death. And life begets life; death begets death.”
Enlightened or not, it looks like two prime candidates for Connecticut’s next rendezvous with the gallows have emerged in the upscale town of Cheshire. Here’s CNN:
Prosecutors in Connecticut say they will seek the death penalty for two men charged with killing three members of a prominent Cheshire, Connecticut, doctor’s family during a gruesome home invasion.
New Haven State’s Attorney Michael Dearington announced additional charges against Steven Hayes, 44, and Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26, on Thursday.
The charged include murder — called capitol felony in Connecticut — which carries a sentence of either life without parole or execution by injection.
The suspects were initially charged with aggravated sexual assault, burglary and arson.
Hayes and Komisarjevsky are accused of killing Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11.
Hawke-Petit’s husband, Dr. William Petit Jr., was assaulted and thrown into the basement of the home during the attack.
After “invading the home”, at 3:00 AM Monday morning, Hayes and Komisarjevsky beat the father and threw him in the basement, raped the women, robbed them, and then burned the house to the ground – murdering everyone but the father.
I’m against the death penalty. I arrived at my opposition intellectually – and over a long period of time – not as a result of inherent revulsion, religious conviction, liberal politics or anything of that sort.
But when I read a story like the one above, I realize that my conversion is nowhere near complete and that I’m in serious danger of backsliding. When two career criminals (with more than twenty convictions on their rap sheets) commit the Devil’s Trifecta of murder, rape, and armed robbery I could not — would not — look a good ol’boy from Missouri in the face and make a cogent argument about why their lives should be spared.
I hope that someone with a longer — and more committed — history of opposition to the death penalty will enlighten me.
In the meantime there’s a part of me (a very big part of me, indeed) that hopes that Dr. Petit buys a gun and takes care of business himself.
July 28, 2007 at 11:35 am
That is a crazy story! Here in Alabama there would be not debate!
Kyle
http://www.itstrendy.com
July 28, 2007 at 7:06 pm
These 2 thugs are animals. This was not just a crime but it was the deliberate annihilation of a family and everything they stood for. There is a visceral fingerprint of hatred in what these bastards did. They had the money. They could have fled with that. But they had to kill. I wish we could lynch them, torture them slowly and lower them into cauldrons of acid. What they did is an affront to everyone of the middleclass and upper middleclass. Be prepared to defend yourself. Buy a gun.
July 28, 2007 at 10:44 pm
The answers supporting why not as opposed to why impose capital punishment relate more to whether or not even indirectly you want your existence contaminated as an accessory and an accomplice to someone else’s murder (or murders) and to whether or not your feel ethically at ease with collaborating and with colluding in other individuals’ death. Alternatives to capital punishment exist. If found guilty, the two defendants can be confined and can be contained in a manner which is simultaneous respectful of communal aspirations for justice, for safety and for the sanctity of all life. Capital punishment is not about “them.” It is arguably about you. In peace.
July 29, 2007 at 3:06 am
Came here to comment, but K. Bandell beat me to what I was going to write.
July 29, 2007 at 9:28 am
Capital punishment.
Any Christians out there? Capital punishment in biblical times entailed members of a village throwing stones at a convicted person until they died. This was accepted at a time when sharp edged weapons were at hand. It cannot be argued that these people were ignorant simply because we possess higher technology today. We are simply a culture with goodies.. no better, and arguably much worse, than the people of that day.
The problem with “peacable containment” is that it doesn’t always last. Repeat offenders are often released once the offense is past the public’s memory. Long term incarceration costs us a lot of money that the public often does not want to take a hard look at in the name of “peace”. These people have rights we do not have – in the name of “state responsibility”, these criminals are placed first on waiting lists for organ donations, lest the state be guilty of not providing a “decent” and “humane” confinement.
Society is inundated with sociopaths that have virtually NIL chance of reform. So called normal citizens cannot fathom such acts of vicious violence such as this case, and therefore strive to understand them… or see them as victims themselves.
These people cannot be healed. They cannot be reasoned with. They will not eventually “see”. These people are adept at letting you see what you want to see to become free to commit these crimes against US again.
Death penalty? In cases where evidence is rock solid certain – YES.