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| Northern Correctional Institution Connecticut |
After executing just 1 prisoner in more than 50 years, Connecticut moved Thursday to become the 5th state in 5 years to do away with the death penalty for good.
But the repeal wouldn't be a lifeline for the state's 11 death row inmates, including 2 men who killed a woman and 2 children in a horrifying home invasion supporters touted as a key reason to keep the law on the books. The state Senate debated for hours Thursday about whether the law would reverse those sentences before voting 20-16 to repeal the law.
After the state Senate's 20-16 Thursday vote to repeal the law, the heavily Democratic state House of Representatives is expected to follow with approval within weeks. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, the 1st Democratic governor elected in 2 decades, has vowed to sign the same bill vetoed by his Republican predecessor.
The wealthy, liberal state is one of the last in the Northeast to have a death penalty law and would join New Mexico, Illinois, New Jersey and New York as the most recent to outlaw capital punishment. Repeal proposals are also pending in several other states including Kansas and Kentucky, while an initiative to end the death penalty goes before California voters in November.
Like Connecticut, states that have recently decided to abolish capital punishment were among those that in practice rarely executed inmates. New Jersey, for example, hasn't executed anyone in more than 40 years; Connecticut's death row population is more than seven times below the national average.
Death sentences and executions are also plummeting around the country as fewer prosecutors push capital punishment cases, often because of new laws that allow life with no possibility of parole as a sentencing option.
The possibility of executing the innocent, driven by the rise of DNA as a tool to exonerate wrongfully convicted defendants, is the biggest overall factor driving states to reconsider capital punishment, said Doug Berman, an Ohio State University law professor.
"That has the most profound and enduring resonance as an argument and one that can never be pushed back," Berman said.
The Senate debate Thursday focused on how the law could affect the state's 11 death row inmates, including the 2 men sentenced to death for the 2007 home invasion attack in the New Haven suburb of Cheshire. They include 2 men sentenced to death for killing a woman and her two daughters after tormenting the family for hours in the New Haven suburb of Cheshire. The lone survivor of the attack, Dr. William Petit, successfully lobbied state lawmakers to hold off on repeal last year when one of the killers was still facing trial.
"We believe in the death penalty because we believe it is really the only true, just punishment for certain heinous and depraved murders," Petit said Wednesday. "One thing you never hear the abolitionists talk about is the victims, almost never. The forgotten people. The people who died and can't be here to speak for themselves."
Connecticut would become the 17th state without a death penalty. Executions in the U.S. have declined from a high of 98 in 1999 to 43 last year, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. The number of people sentenced to death each year has also dropped sharply, from 300 a decade ago to 78 last year, he said.
Dieter, a leading anti-death penalty advocate, attributed the states' decision to repeal to "the revelation of so many mistakes," wrongful convictions exposed by new DNA evidence. Executions have also been delayed in several states as supplies of the drugs used to put inmates to death have become scarce. States such as Ohio and Texas have limited supplies of pentobarbital, used in lethal injections, and have not said what they will do when those supplies run out.
One Connecticut state senator said the possibility that an innocent person could face execution weighed heavily on her conscience.
"I cannot stand the thought of being responsible for somebody being falsely accused and facing the death penalty," said Sen. Edith Prague, D-Columbia. "For me, this is a moral issue and realizing that mistakes are obviously made."
A Connecticut state Innocence Project that began reviewing cases in 2005 with new DNA technology has yielded several high-profile exonerations.
Kevin Ireland served 20 years in prison for the 1986 murder of a mother of 4 in Wallingford, but was freed in 2009 on the basis of DNA tests. Another man was sentenced last month to 60 years in prison for the killing. In another case, Miguel Roman served 2 decades behind bars for killing his pregnant teenage girlfriend in Hartford in1988, only to be freed in 2008 because of DNA evidence. Neither man had faced the death penalty.
Connecticut has carried out only 1 execution in 51 years, when serial killer Michael Ross was administered lethal injection in 2005 after giving up his appeal rights.
Judges, lawyers and victims' families have blamed foot-dragging by the courts and lawyers and the complexity of the appeal system for delays in executing others. Of the 11 men on Connecticut's death row, 3 have been awaiting execution for more than two decades and 2 others have been on death row for at least 12 years. By comparison, the average time between conviction and execution in Texas is 10 1/2 years.
Thursday's vote occurred after a debate that lasted more than 10 hours and focused largely on whether death row inmates like Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, convicted in the Cheshire home invasion, could be helped by the law. Critics said they were concerned attorneys would use the law change as grounds for throwing out the sentence in the future.
"For those who say we should execute those 11, but none going further, the only way to keep that promise, the only way to keep that promise, is to keep our death penalty law," said Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, who opposes the repeal.
Preserving the death sentence of those still on death row is fairly unusual, although a similar law took effect in New Mexico. The governor declined to commute the sentences of the state's 2 men on death row after the repeal was signed in 2009.
Source: AP, April 6, 2012
A vote against death penalty
The Connecticut Senate voted to repeal the law, and the state House is expected to follow suit.
After executing just one prisoner in more than 50 years, Connecticut moved Thursday to become the fifth state in five years to do away with the death penalty for good.
But the repeal wouldn't be a lifeline for the state's 11 death-row inmates, including two men who killed a woman and two children in a horrifying home invasion that death-penalty supporters touted as a key reason to keep the law on the books. The state Senate debated for hours Thursday about whether the law would reverse those sentences before voting 20-16 to repeal the law.
After the state Senate's 20-16 Thursday vote to repeal the law, the state's heavily Democratic House is expected to follow with approval within weeks. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, the first Democratic governor elected in two decades, has vowed to sign the same bill vetoed by his GOP predecessor.
The wealthy, liberal state is one of the last in the Northeast to have a death penalty law and would join New Mexico, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York as the most recent to outlaw capital punishment. Repeal proposals are pending in several other states, including Kansas and Kentucky, while an initiative to end the death penalty goes before California voters in November.
Like Connecticut, states that have recently decided to abolish capital punishment were among those that rarely executed inmates. New Jersey, for example, hasn't executed anyone in more than 40 years.
Death sentences and executions are also plummeting around the country as fewer prosecutors push capital punishment cases, often because of new laws that allow life with no possibility of parole as a sentencing option.
The possibility of executing the innocent, driven by the rise of DNA as a tool to exonerate wrongfully convicted defendants, is the biggest overall factor driving states to reconsider capital punishment, said Doug Berman, an Ohio State University law professor.
"That has the most profound and enduring resonance as an argument and one that can never be pushed back," Berman said.
The Senate debate Thursday focused on how the law could affect the state's 11 death-row inmates, including the 2 men behind the 2007 home invasion attack in the New Haven suburb of Cheshire. They killed a woman and her 2 daughters after tormenting the family for hours. The lone survivor of the attack, William Petit, successfully lobbied state lawmakers to hold off on repeal last year when one of the killers was still facing trial.
"We believe in the death penalty because we believe it is really the only true, just punishment for certain heinous and depraved murders," Petit said Wednesday. "One thing you never hear the abolitionists talk about is the victims, almost never. The forgotten people. The people who died and can't be here to speak for themselves."
Connecticut would become the 17th state without a death penalty. Executions in the United States have declined from a high of 98 in 1999 to 43 last year, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. The number of people sentenced to death each year has also dropped sharply, from 300 a decade ago to 78 last year, he said.
Connecticut has carried out only one execution in 51 years Judges, lawyers and victims' families have blamed foot-dragging by the courts and lawyers and the complexity of the appeal system for delays in executing others.
Source: Associated Press, April 6, 2012
Death penalty repeal vote draws mixed reaction
After nearly 2 decades of opposing the death penalty, state Sen. Andrew Roraback, R-Goshen, voted Thursday not to repeal the state's execution laws.
Roraback was among many area legislators who voted against state Senate efforts to repeal the death penalty.
The measure, however, passed the state Senate and moves on to the House.
Roraback, a Republican seeking his party's nomination in the race for the 5th Congressional District, said while his position that the state shouldn't take a life hasn't changed, the proposal contained aspects with which he disagreed.
Among those, he said, included a provision that the 11 people on death row will continue to face execution.
"If the belief is that the death penalty shouldn't have a place in our society, why is the bill requiring the taking of 11 lives?" he said. "It was as intellectually inconsistent a bill as one can imagine."
Roraback said he also voted against the repeal because his amendment was rejected. Roraback's proposal would have repealed the state's early prison-release program.
"Instead of getting the death penalty, people would get life in prison without parole," he said. "I want to have confidence that those sentences won't be changed in the future."
Chris Healy, a spokesman for Lisa Wilson-Foley, who is also seeking the GOP nomination for the 5th Congressional District seat now held by Rep. Chris Murphy, D-Conn,, said her camp was pleased Roraback "changed his mind and decided to stick up for justice."
"Whatever his motivations are will have to be explained in a public debate," Healy said. "We could criticize him for changing his mind, but it was Lisa (Wilson-Foley) who asked him in the past to reconsider his position. She feels she brought him along."
Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, who Republican leaders have said is on the short list of the party's gubernatorial candidates for 2014, said he wouldn't sign the repeal legislation as governor.
"Sometimes a crime is so heinous that the only appropriate punishment is death," Boughton said, adding, however, he understands both sides of the argument. "I don't support repealing the death penalty, but I can't fault any legislator for voting their conscience."
State Rep. Robert Godfrey, D-Danbury, said he has always supported the death penalty and will vote against the repeal.
"I made up my mind on this a long time ago," he said. "Some people may not like that, but that's what my conscience tells me."
Antoinette Bosco, 83, of Brookfield, whose son John and his wife Nancy were murdered in Montana, is against the death penalty.
Bosco has spoken to state legislators on many occasions, telling them her story and asking them to see the issue through her eyes.
"I cannot believe in killing anyone deliberately,'' Bosco said Wednesday. "We're better than that.''
State Sen. Michael McLachlan, R-Danbury, said he was disappointed the repeal is moving forward.
"Connecticut will be at a disadvantage, not having the death penalty for the most egregious crimes," McLachlan said. "I am disappointed in the Legislature."
Source: NewsTimes, April 6, 2012
Death Penalty Death Watch: Abolition in Connecticut
It looks like Connecticut is about to join modern civilization: On Thursday morning, state senators voted 20-16 in favor of repealing the death penalty. The abolition bill now goes to the state House, where it’s likely to pass, and then to Democratic Governor Dannel P. Malloy, who said he’ll sign it.
There’s one catch: The legislation would not alter the sentences of the 11 inmates currently on Connecticut’s death row. According to the Associated Press, many officials insisted on this exception as a condition of support, which is really about punishing 2 particular individuals, Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky. Mr. Hayes and Mr. Komisarjevsky were sentenced to death on October 13, 2011 and January 27, 2012, respectively, for murdering a mother and her 2 daughters during a brutal home invasion. The Hartford Courant has called the case “possibly the most publicized crime in the state’s history,” and it’s simply not palatable for Connecticut politicians to effectively overturn their sentences.
Politically, this exception was unavoidable, a necessary compromise to achieve the greater good of ending the death penalty in Connecticut. But in the general scheme of things, those who oppose capital punishment have to accept that abolition won’t just affect possibly innocent people, or guilty people who can prove serious mitigating circumstances. It will mean that even obviously guilty people, including those convicted of the most heinous crimes, won’t die at the hands of the state. They’ll die in prison, instead.
Source: Andrew Rosenthal blog, New York Times, April 6, 2012
Why they switched their votes on the death penalty
Visits to Connecticut prisons, the death of loved ones and even random conversations on a train platform informed and tempered the 10 1/2 hour debate that led to the state Senate's historic vote early Thursday to end the death penalty.
Sen. Carlo Leone, D-Stamford, traced his personal evolution to a recent trip to the Northern Correctional Institution in Somers, where the 11 men facing execution are housed under grim super-max conditions on death row.
For Sen. Joseph J. Crisco Jr., D-Woodbridge, the tragic loss of a young grandson hit home with the finality of death, repelling him from voting to retain the death penalty, which he supported in 2009.
Another who voted to keep capital punishment in 2009 was Sen. Gayle S. Slossberg, D-Milford. She said that soul-searching and a casual encounter with an elderly man while waiting for a Metro-North commuter train shifted her to the opposition.
Those 3 votes, along with Sen. Edith G. Prague, D-Columbia, who helped kill a repeal bill last year, were the keys to the successful 20-15 passage of what might be the highest-profile legislation of the 2012 session.
In 2009, it passed the House 90-56 and the Senate 19-17 before then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell's veto, which went unchallenged.
Now, the bill, with added assurances that it would not affect those on death row, is headed for easy passage next week in the House of Representatives. It will then go to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a former criminal prosecutor who opposes capital punishment, for his signature.
Leone voted against repeal as a member of the House in 2009. He said the visit to Northern C.I. was eye-opening and helped change his perspective in support of a new classification of murder under "special circumstances." That designation would put the most dangerous, depraved murderers in prison until their natural deaths.
"Life without possibility of release, in essence, is life on death row," Leone said during the debate. "They will be in a more restrictive area with less privileges than those on death row."
He said that with the exception of the one execution of an inmate since 1960 -- serial killer Michael Ross, who gave up court challenges in 2005 rather than linger in prison -- Connecticut's death penalty is impotent.
"The appeals are endless," Leone said. "Forty-50 years: Only one? That's the part I was struggling with. Because emotionally, people who commit heinous crimes, crazy crimes, they should be executed, but we can't seem to do it. If you do try to make it workable then you have constitutionality issues that come into play. So by having the bill as amended, with the harsher reality (that) if you're going to be in prison for the rest of your life, the key thrown away, you will die in prison -- period -- is a pretty harsh sentence."
Slossberg said that while waiting for a train to New York she sat next to an elderly man. They chatted and he eventually told her something that has lingered.
"He said that between the tough economy, the rise of hate crimes, the vilification of this group or that group by otherwise good, moral people and the seemingly chronic need to blame somebody for society's problems, he said he was afraid, not for himself, but for our children," Slossberg recalled for the silent Senate chamber.
"It is only a short step from here to there, he said, to think of some people as less than human. And once we think of people as less than human, it becomes easy to kill them, and then what kind of society do we really have?" Slossberg said. "That's really the question of today's debate: What kind of society do we have, and what kind of society do we want for our children. I want something better for our future. We cannot confront darkness with darkness and expect light."
Crisco recalled the death of his namesake grandson, Joseph J. Crisco IV of Rhode Island, who died from chronic ailments at age 12 in 2009, as so shattering for him and his wife that he began changing his opinion on capital punishment.
"And it's not a day or week goes by where you don't think about that loss," Crisco said, adding that the feeling helped him to empathize when he met with families of murder victims who were working for repeal of the death penalty because of the prolonged appeals processes.
"I understood that even though the bill as written could bring closure, there is never closure when you lose a loved one because my wife and I think of our grandson Joseph just about every day," Crisco said.
"In speaking to bishops and rabbis and priests and ministers and other people I became in my mind educated in regards for us as a society," Crisco said, also recalling a recent visit to Northern C.I. with other senators.
"To me, that is hell on Earth," Crisco said. "How one retains one's sanity in an environment like that is incomprehensible."
Prague voted to repeal executions in 2009. Last year, after meeting with Dr. William Petit, whose wife and 2 daughters were murdered during the infamous 2007 Cheshire home invasion, she felt like she had to oppose the repeal bill that died in the Senate.
"I wasn't about to cause him any more problems," Prague said.
But this year she met James Tillman, who was exonerated a couple of years ago, through DNA evidence, after spending 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit.
"I don't want to be part of a system that sends innocent people to prison or innocent people to the death penalty," Prague said.
When Connecticut joins the 16 other states and the District of Columbia that have abolished executions, it will make New Hampshire the last New England state to retain capital punishment.
Source: Connecticut Post, April 6, 2012