SPRINGFIELD, MA (WGGB/WSHM) — Massachusetts does not have a death penalty. The state’s highest court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional in 1984, citing a law that imposed a death sentence only on defendants who chose a jury trial while sparing those who pleaded guilty.
The state has a history of capital punishment dating to the Salem Witch Trials in the 1600s. The last executions in Massachusetts took place in 1947, when gangsters Philip Bellino and Edward Gertson were put to death in the electric chair for murder.
After that, successive governors declined to sign death warrants as public sentiment in Massachusetts shifted toward abolition.
“In 1982 they actually passed a law — they made it law that you could not find that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment in Massachusetts, so there was a movement to try to keep the death penalty and then the courts struck it down based on how it was written,” local defense attorney Joseph Pachella said.
The state Supreme Judicial Court struck down the death penalty in 1984. State lawmakers have attempted several times over the decades to reinstate it, most recently in 2018 following the fatal shooting of Yarmouth police Officer Sean Gannon.
Pachella said the chances of bringing back capital punishment are slim. “The courts are certainly concerned about the effect that it has should someone be convicted and then exonerated on appeal. The finality of the death penalty is a scary thing for people and it wouldn’t be supported here in Massachusetts,” he explained.
Federal exceptions remain in place. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faced a 30-count federal indictment after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Seventeen of the charges carried the possibility of the death penalty, including using weapons of mass destruction resulting in death.
“You have a number of statutes that apply to the same crimes – gun possession, drug possession, murder. In Massachusetts, depending on whether or not there’s a federal component and so if they can prove that things crossed over state lines, that people traveled here from a distance – if they have some federal hook they can bring the same charge but they can bring the death penalty,” Pachella noted.
Federal jurisdiction applied in Tsarnaev’s case because the Boston Marathon affected interstate commerce. He was found guilty on all 30 charges and remains on death row under a federal sentence.
The most severe sentence a Massachusetts state court can impose for first-degree murder is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
The last person put to death in New England was serial killer Michael Ross. He was executed in Somers, Connecticut, using lethal injection in May 2005. Connecticut’s Legislature abolished the death penalty in 2012.
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