With Friday’s state Supreme Court decision, Connecticut now officially joins with almost every other civilized nation and most of its adjoining states in ending the use of government executions to extract punishment.

In 2012, the General Assembly approved and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed into law Public Act 12-5, which repealed the death penalty. It came with one major caveat. Those already convicted and sentenced to death prior to enactment of the law were still subject to execution by lethal injection.

This newspaper, which has long opposed the death penalty, considered that arbitrary chronological distinction unconstitutional. The Connecticut Supreme Court has now agreed.

“Following the enactment of P.A. 12-5, Connecticut's capital punishment scheme no longer comports with our state’s contemporary standards of decency. It therefore offends the state constitutional prohibition against excessive and disproportionate punishment,” states the courts majority opinion ending the death penalty.

Barring an effort by the legislature to restore capital punishment, there will be no more government-sanctioned executions in Connecticut.

In fact, Connecticut has long been moving in this direction. Though juries have handed down death sentences, the state has not carried them out in modern times. The one exception was the 2005 execution of Michael Ross, convicted of killing six young women and girls in this area. Mr. Ross fought to end his appeals and carry out his death sentence.

The high court recognized this trend in its decision.

“Public Act 12-5 thus represents the terminus of the four century long devolution of the death penalty in Connecticut. Although the prospective nature of P.A. 12-5 reflects the intent of the legislature that capital punishment shall die with a whimper, not with a bang, its death knell has been rung nonetheless. Our elected representatives have determined that the machinery of death is irreparable or, at the least, unbecoming to a civilized modern society,” wrote Justice Richard Palmer for the majority.

Our only disappointment is that the court was divided on the question, 4-3. It seems to us that it would have been clearly unconstitutional to allow the execution of some inmates after a repeal of the death penalty.

The Day has grounded its editorial opposition to state executions on several principles. Humans make mistakes, but an execution is a mistake no one can correct. Societies should take the high moral ground and not kill murderers in eye-for-an-eye retribution. Imposition of the death penalty can be arbitrary, and because of appeals, ends up costing taxpayers far more than a life sentence without parole.

Repealing the death penalty in 2012, while keeping it in place for those already sentenced to death, was a political contrivance. Recall that the backdrop of that legislative debate was the continuing legal proceedings stemming from the heinous Cheshire murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters Hayley and Michaela. Perhaps no murders had ever so enraged the Connecticut public and even many death penalty opponents did not want to be tied to commuting the death sentences of those killers, Steven J. Hayes and Joshua A. Komisarjevsky.

Back in 2012, the state’s top prosecutor warned lawmakers they could not have it both ways.

“I think you need to know when you’re considering your votes on this what’s real and what’s not. What this law would do would create two classes of people. One class would be subject to the death penalty; the other class would not, and that would not be because of the nature of the crime or the nature of the defendant — it would be because of the date on which the crime occurred," said Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane in his testimony to the legislature.

And that, he said, would be very difficult to defend constitutionally. He was right.

Though the death penalty ends in Connecticut "with a whimper," it is appropriate that it does end.