The Connecticut House of Representatives voted 86-62 to abolish the state's death penalty late Wednesday after more than nine hours of contentious debate, according to the Hartford Courant.
Despite outcries from to keep the law in place, the State Senate also voted 20-16 in favor of repeal last week as well. The bill will now go to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who has indicated in the past he would sign such a bill should it reach his desk and reiterated his support for repeal in a statement late Wednesday.
“I’m pleased the House passed the bill, and when it gets to my desk I will sign it," Malloy said in a statement Wednesday. “I want to be careful in the tone of my remarks, out of respect for the gravity of the issue at hand and out of respect for people on both sides of the issue. When I sign this bill, Connecticut will join 16 other states and almost every other industrialized nation in moving toward what I believe is better public policy. For decades, we have not had a workable death penalty. Only one person’s been executed in Connecticut in the last 52 years, and he volunteered for it. Going forward, we will have a system that allows us to put these people away for life, in living conditions none of us would want to experience. Let’s throw away the key and have them spend the rest of their natural lives in jail.”
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