LWVCT President Cheryl Dunson spoke with WGCH's Tony Savino about the League's Annual Convention, coming up on May 21, 2011, and the League's  position on the death penalty.


Click on the play button below to listen.

April 29, 2011HARTFORD, Conn. – A bill to abolish the death penalty in Connecticut is heading for a vote in the Senate. The League of Women Voters of Connecticut is supporting the legislation after conducting a study of the issue.

Ellen McBride, the League's specialist on this topic, says ...

Read the full article from Public News Service at http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/19788-1.

The League of Women Voters of Connecticut (LWVCT), a non-partisan organization in addition to an emphasis on voter registration and education, studies various governmental policies in depth in order to determine if they are effective and if the LWVCT should support them or advocate for their change.

In 2006 I was part of such a statewide study of the death penalty. This involved research and interviews and concluded with a consensus position supported statewide by our local leagues as follows:

"The League believes that capital punishment should not be a sentencing option for murder or any other crime. A sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release is punishment that ensures public safety without raising the many complex problems associated with the death penalty. Until the death penalty in Connecticut is abolished, the LWVCT supports an immediate moratorium on executions."

On March 7, 2011 at the public hearing before the Judiciary Committee, I submitted testimony on behalf of the LWVCT on two bills to repeal the death penalty and made the following points:

. The death penalty causes additional harm to victims’ families by subjecting them to years of media attention and replaying of the crime while appeals are made. This is not swift justice. The needs of these families are not met.

. The death penalty as a deterrent is not provable.

. Innocent people have been convicted in Connecticut. It takes years to undo such convictions if it can be done.

. The death penalty is not applied fairly and consistently without regard to race, gender and socio-economics or geography.

. The death penalty costs more than life imprisonment without parole.

The General Assembly's Office of Fiscal Analysis estimates that the death penalty costs the state of Connecticut four million dollars a year to maintain.

Having studied the death penalty carefully, the LWVCT urges our legislators to support SB 1035 AA Repealing the Death Penalty.  This bill would replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without the possibility of release.  Under current state law, individuals serving sentences for murder are not eligible for parole. Therefore, life imprisonment without release is just that—a lifetime spent behind bars.

Ellen McBride
LWVCT Death Penalty Specialist