From the 1630s through the early 1770s in Connecticut, the justices wrote, two-thirds of those hanged for crimes were people of color.
From a 12-year-old girl to a 73-year-old farmer, Connecticut has executed about 160 people over the nearly 400-year history of the death penalty. Two state justices invoked that history while writing in support of the court's decision to overturn capital punishment.
Justices Andrew McDonald and FlemmingNorcott said the record is clear: of the nearly 160 documented executions in Connecticut history, the justices wrote that more than one half of those put to death have been either members of racial minorities or "low status" first generation Americans.
"It's capricious, as to who gets it and who doesn't," said Lawrence Goodheart, professor of history at UConn and author of The Solemn Sentence of Death, a book widely cited by the justices in their opinion.
Goodheart said it's generally outsiders who get executed. "Eleven people were executed for witchcraft, nine of them women -- and the two men were their husbands," he said. "A 73-year-old Jewish farmer who was on the margins of society in 1905 was executed. In 1786, the last female was executed -- and I say female because she was a 12-year-old girl of mixed race."
The 12-year-old, Hannah Occuish, was hanged in public.
From the 1630s through the early 1770s in Connecticut, the justices wrote, two-thirds of those hanged for crimes were people of color, despite the fact that non-whites at the time accounted for only five percent of the state population.
Goodheart said that Michael Ross, who volunteered for execution in 2005, was the only college graduate executed in Connecticut, and he said the most people who were hanged in Connecticut were Italian immigrants.
In their ruling this week, justices said the death penalty "no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency" in Connecticut.
Goodheart agreed, and said he thinks it's "the logical culmination of 400 years of an atrocious, arbitrary, capricious process."
