"Connecticut is poised to become the 17th state without the death penalty and the fifth in five years to abolish it. Gov. Dannel Malloy is expected to sign the repeal bill approved by the Legislature in recent days.
The proposed law — which passed by an 86-62 vote late Wednesday — would replace the death penalty with life imprisonment and make Connecticut the fifth US state to ban capital punishment in the last five years.
However, it would still allow the state to execute the 11 men currently on death row, a compromise struck by the Democratic majority, which supported the bill, and Republicans who opposed it.
The years-long effort to repeal the death penalty in Connecticut has been been shadowed by a shocking 2007 triple murder, and the often tense debate on the House floor lasted more than nine hours, according to the Hartford Courant.
“This vote tonight literally allows Connecticut to break with a centuries-old tradition of executing people and rejoin the rest of the Western world,” it quoted Benjamin Todd Jealous, the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights group, as saying.
“It also moves our nation forward,” he added, after watching the debate from the House gallery. The bill now goes to Governor Dannel Malloy, who has pledged to sign it into law.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/more-evidence-against-the-death-penalty.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120413
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