Public Defense

Disparity challenge to death penalty survives motion to dismiss (updated)

By Gideon

Update: Here’s a copy

CT death row inmates’ racial and geographical disparity challenge to the death penalty survived a motion to dismiss. The challenge was made under provisions of both the Connecticut and Federal Constitutions. That might be what saved it (among other things).

In his decision, Judge Stanley T. Fuger Jr. said Connecticut’s constitution affords defendants greater legal rights than the U.S. Constitution, so, therefore, they have the right to present the kind of systemwide bias evidence that the 1987 ruling barred.

“Connecticut is not closing its eyes to this claim as most state courts have done,” said David Baldus, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law who has studied bias in the death penalty in four states and in the city of Philadelphia. “So that’s why this is an unusual case. Unusual and important.”

This is a serious issue and perhaps it wouldn’t have been the wisest thing to dismiss the claims, as Judge Fuger recognizes:

“In the instant case, the petitioners allege that they are to be deprived of their lives in a proceeding that has been tainted by the imposition of improper racial determinations,” Fuger wrote in his decision. “The stakes are, therefore, extraordinarily high for these petitioners and merit the closest of scrutiny before throwing the complaint out of court without any opportunity to provide the validity of the claims.”

Previous coverage here, here, here and here.

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Full post as published by A Public Defender on February 28, 2008 (boomark / email).