White Judge Finds No Smoking Gun Evidence of Racial Bias in Connecticut Death Penalty

From [HERE] There is no proof of a systemic racial disparity in the way Connecticut prosecutors have sought the death penalty, a judge ruled Friday, denying claims from five death row inmates who sought to have their sentences overturned. Rockville Superior Court Judge Samuel Sferrazza, who is white, issued his ruling in a consolidated habeas corpus appeal filed by the inmates in 2005, before the state repealed capital punishment for future cases last year.

Not only did the inmates fail to offer sufficient proof of a racial component in pursuit of the death penalty, the judge wrote, it wouldn’t be enough to force their sentences to be overturned. “The salient question is not whether race may influence death penalty outcomes in Connecticut,” Sferrazza wrote. “The critical issue is … whether the death sentence of any of the petitioners in this case was the product of intentional discrimination.”

Citing U.S. and state Supreme Court rulings, Sferrazza wrote that studies showing a systemic racial or other bias with the death penalty can be used as evidence during reviews of imposed death sentences. “However, such generic evidence, by itself, is insufficient to overturn a death sentence,” Sferrazza wrote.

Here the racist suspect judge was looking for smoking gun evidence of racism such as racial slurs by prosecutors or specific documents detailing plans to target Blacks for the death penalty. Ridiculous. The presumption is that the criminal justice system is race neutral, "fair" and free from bias. So a defendant must prove it otherwise to defeat this presumption. This is racism/deception as such admissible evidence will rarely exist.

This presumption should be reveresed to match the actual reality that we live under a racist/white supremacist operating system (OS) of oppression. Vast racial disparity evidenced by statistics should raise the presumption and the Government should be required to rebut it. The Court's fake search for truth or tangible evidence from the mind of a bigoted decision maker ignores reality. The inquiry is done only for show and is not designed to result in justice for the victims of white supremacy. Neely Fuller calls this the refinement of white supremacy. -BW  

Six of the 10 men on death row are black and three are white, while blacks make up 10 percent of the state’s population.

Last year Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed a law eliminating Connecticut's death penalty for any new cases but leaving the existing 11 inmates on death row. Meanwhile, five of them, Sedrick Cobb, Daniel Webb, Todd Rizzo, Richard Reynolds and Robert Breton, filed suit seeking to have their sentences converted from death to life in prison without parole.