[JURIST] The Connecticut Supreme Court [official website] on Thursday ruled 5-2 [opinion, PDF] to uphold the state’s ban on capital punishment. The decision, which rested upon the court’s previous decision [JURIST report] against capital punishment, stated once again that allowing the death penalty would be against the state’s constitution and prior state legislation. In reversing the two death sentences imposed upon Russel Peeler, the court remanded the case and instructed the lower court to impose a sentence of life in prison without possibility of release. Peeler had ordered the murder [Connecticut Post report] of Leroy “BJ” Brown, a child that had witnessed Peeler murder his father, and his mother, Karen Clarke, in 1999.

Capital punishment [JURIST op-ed] remains a controversial issue in the US and worldwide. Earlier this month the Alabama Supreme Court upheld a stay [JURIST report] on the execution of a mentally incompetent Alabama inmate. Last month Virginia’s General Assembly voted [JURIST report] to keep secret the identities of suppliers of lethal injection drugs. In February the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected [JURIST report] a Georgia death row inmate’s legal challenge to the death penalty. In January Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood stated that he plans to ask lawmakers to approve the firing squad, electrocution or nitrogen gas as alternate methods of execution if the state prohibits lethal injection [JURIST report]. The Supreme Court in January ruled [JURIST report] in Kansas v. Carr [opinion, PDF] that a jury in a death penalty case does not need to be advised that mitigating factors, which can lessen the severity of a criminal act, do not need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt like aggravating factors.