The Connecticut Supreme Court on Monday upheld both the state’s death penalty law and the death sentence of a man who killed a 13-year-old boy with a sledgehammer in 1997, The Associated Press reports.
Both decisions came in the appeal of 33-year-old death row inmate Todd Rizzo, whose lawyers challenged Rizzo’s convictions and the legality of the state’s death penalty under the Connecticut Constitution.
The high court issued a 6-1 decision rejecting all of Rizzo’s arguments and upholding his death sentence. Justice Flemming L. Norcott Jr., was the lone dissenter, saying he continued to maintain his position that “the death penalty has no place in the jurisprudence of the state of Connecticut” and recommending a life prison sentence for Rizzo.
Rizzo’s public defenders and a state prosecutor who handled Rizzo’s appeal didn’t immediately return phone messages Monday.
Rizzo was sentenced to death under a 1995 state law that allows jurors in death penalty cases to weigh aggravating factors, such as a crime’s brutality, against mitigating factors, such as abuse a defendant suffered during childhood. A three-judge panel imposed the death sentence on Rizzo in 2005.
