With the signing of a death penalty abolition law in Connecticut at the end of April, the U.S. moved toward general abolition of the death penalty as a sentence, but the Nutmeg state is only the 17th in the nation to end its use.

The country is moving painfully slowly toward joining the developed countries of the world in eliminating official state killing of people in its charge. Although there are many arguments heard on both sides of the issue, it seems clear that knowing that one might be subject to the death penalty is not a deterrent to a crime of passion or a crime committed by an unbalanced personality.

A life sentence without possibility of parole would seem to serve the same purpose for those who believe that the death penalty is a preventive measure, but the debate rages on and Americans, in general, seem to be of many different minds about it. Depending on which polls are consulted, and how the question is presented, the country remains split rather evenly on continuing use of death as a punishment.

The continuing debate on the matter involves whether a sentence of death is justice or revenge. Often, when Americans are questioned about it and an alternative sentence of life without the possibility of parole is offered, the numbers jump considerably in favor of the alternative and against death. In that light, Connecticut is in line with those who prefer the alternative, and the bill signed into law by Governor Dannel P. Malloy provides that alternative.

There are just 33 states left to consider abandoning the death penalty, in the absence of a federal law to ban the practice. What is interesting is that the Connecticut law comes just 226 years after the first “state” in the world, Tuscany, abolished the death penalty in 1786. After unification, Italy abolished the death penalty in 1889, except for the 21-year period of fascist rule that began in 1926.

The advent of the Innocence Project, in which DNA testing has been used in many high profile cases to secure the removal from the prison system of many persons wrongly convicted of crimes, including many on death row, has changed the way most people view the U.S. incarceration rate and the application of the death penalty. The “justice” in the justice system, itself, has been questioned, and there are innumerable examples of injustices that could have been prevented, but those in power refused in many cases to “rock the boat” and call for a new trial, based on new evidence or evidence that was suppressed in the original trial.

That’s why the Innocence Project is such a revelation: because it’s based on DNA, which provides truly scientific evidence of innocence. Building a case for finding a convicted person innocent is a time-consuming project, so the numbers are quite low, when compared with the number of inmates in America’s prisons.

In 2010, there were some 2.2 million in U.S. prisons and jails. This is in a population in that year of 308,745,538. Black or African-Americans made up just 12.6 percent and Latinos made up 16.3 percent of the population. Yet, black inmates made up 41.58 percent of death row inmates, Hispanic made up 11.34 percent, and whites made up 44.74 percent, according to 2009 figures from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

There is a persistent attitude that criminals, especially those who murder or commit other acts of physical harm to victims, “deserve to die,” and there are plenty of crimes which seem to warrant such a final disposition. This is especially true among the families and friends of the victims. But, remarkably, there are those victims’ families who can summon up the courage and compassion to forgive the perpetrator, although they might not want to see them out of prison for their lifetime.

The Connecticut governor, in signing the bill, noted that this is “a time for sober reflection, not celebration,” and he included in his statement that the state’s death penalty law was unworkable and that had had influence in his decision to sign the bill to abolish. Malloy, however, did not unequivocally decide to abolish on the basis that the death penalty is wrong and that the state’s taking of a life is wrong. Rather, he mentioned the “appeal after appeal,” for which (sometimes great) expenses the taxpayers are liable. For the most devoted proponents of a death sentence, the expense of the appeals do not seem to matter, no matter how often it is pointed out that a life sentence without possibility of parole is cheaper than sentencing someone to death.

Toward the end of the Age of Enlightenment, public opinion on the death penalty was affected in part by the publication of “On Crimes and Punishments,” written by Cesare Baccaria and published in 1764. The young man’s (he was 26) writing had an effect on Enlightenment figures, such as Voltaire. It was not the only writing on crime and punishment, but it had great influence among the enlightened.

Baccaria’s opposition to the death penalty was twofold: Because the state does not possess the right to take lives; and because capital punishment is neither a useful nor a necessary form of punishment. Since that time, the arguments against capital punishment have been along the same lines, whether or not either side had ever heard of Baccaria.

The U.S. holds a rather unique place among the so-called developed nations, in being one of the few that holds fast to the death penalty, regardless of opinion polls at any given time. Although the federal government has its own set of laws regarding its use of the death penalty, all 50 states have their own laws regarding use of capital punishment and, as we have seen, only 17 have stopped using it.

Of great concern to death penalty opponents is the lopsided use of it against black citizens and other minorities. But then, the ratio of black prisoners to white prisoners in the various states’ prisons and jails might give an indication (leaving the philosophy of application of law for another discussion) of how the death penalty would be dispensed.

One would think that the “liberal” states of the Northeast and upper Midwest would have the smallest disparity in incarceration rates, but one would be wrong. For example, New York has a rate of black-to-white prisoners of 9.4-1. In New Jersey, it’s 12.4-1. In Massachusetts, it’s 8.1-1. In Wisconsin, it’s 10.6-1. In Connecticut, it’s 12-1, and in Vermont, it’s 12.5-1.

Here’s a sampling of incarceration rates, black to white prisoners, in some other states: In South Carolina, it’s 4.5-1. In Georgia, it’s 3.3-1. In Texas, it’s 4.7-1. In Mississippi and Alabama, it’s 3.5-1. In Louisiana, it’s 4.7-1, and in Arkansas, it’s 3.9-1. These numbers come from the Sentencing Project, which monitors the judicial system, including the incarceration ratios.

What’s going on here in this disparity of rates should be a specific subject in the long-standing debate about racism in the judicial system. This is a tough debate, because there are 50 states and one national government, each with its own set of laws and its own set of applications of those laws and their own prison systems. Naturally, this would not include the privatized prisons and the question about who the owners of those prisons answer to, regarding issues of individual rights under the U.S. Constitution.

What we do know is that the incarceration rate destroys black families; it destroys family and community life among other minorities, as well. And, the diminishing use of the death penalty shows us that Americans are not exactly for it, but they haven’t decided to abolish it. Martin Luther King Jr. said that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice…”

Like the justness of the wars which the U.S. continually wages, the death penalty should be in constant sight of Americans, debating not only the likelihood that we will engage in the former or carry out the latter, but we should be debating the morality of both. Politicians are made uncomfortable by discussing the morality or ethics of political acts, but the people must make them open the debate.

The abolition of the death penalty in Connecticut might be a good place to start. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait for another Enlightenment to eliminate the death penalty in the rest of the country.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.