Conn. death penalty repeal appears in doubt

[Jase]

“It’s just a matter of time before we have somebody on Death Row who is innocent,” said Karen Goodrow, director of the Connecticut Innocence Project.

But until that time comes there are a lot of GUILTY ONES there!!!

[J - Dog]

http://articles.courant.com/2012-03-14/news/hc-death-penalty-hearing-0315-20120314_1_death-penalty-capital-punishment-death-row

March 14, 2012|By DANIELA ALTIMARI, altimari@courant.com, The Hartford Courant

For the third time since 2009, the legislature's judiciary committee on Wednesday pondered the fate of Connecticut's death penalty, but those who want to abolish capital punishment believe this may be their year.

"I think there's a real sense of urgency," Ben Jones, executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, said Wednesday evening, about eight hours into a hearing on the topic. "We debated this so often, we just need to seal the deal." 

Jones noted that this year, the two Democratic Senate leaders, President Pro Tem Donald Williams of Brooklyn and Majority Leader Martin Looney of New Haven, were among the first to testify in support of the bill, which would replace the death penalty with life in prison with no possibility of release. And, he said, the NAACP is also making a big push for repeal. 

The emotional topic of repealing the state's death penalty drew large crowds to the state Capitol complex but the one individual whose pro-death penalty view has dominated the debate in recent years did not attend. Dr. William Petit, the sole survivor of a horrific home invasion in Cheshire in 2007, has been a familiar presence at past legislative hearings on the topic, but this time, neither Petit nor his sister, Johanna Petit Chapman, was present.

"We firmly believe that the death penalty is the appropriate sanction in certain heinous, cruel and depraved crimes,'' Chapman wrote in an email to reporters. "Let us take the 'c' word out of the discussion. There is no such thing as 'closure' when your loved one is savagely taken from you. There can, however, be adequate and just punishment and that is the death penalty." 

The Cheshire case has loomed over the death penalty debate. Last year, a similar bill cleared the committee but did not come up for a vote in the House or Senate after two key Democratic senators pulled their support, citing the ongoing trial of one of the men accused in the Petit killings. Since then, both suspects in the case have been convicted and sentenced to death. 

The death penalty bill is "prospective" in nature, meaning it would not apply to the 11 men on Connecticut's death row. Several experts testified that defense attorneys would use abolition of capital punishment to preserve the lives of those currently sentenced to death. 

However, a review by the Quinnipiac University School of Law Civil Justice Clinic found that appealthing to keep getting closer and closer to freedeombrought by defense lawyers after the death penalty is abolished are not necessarily upheld. After lawmakers in New Mexico banned the death penalty for all new crimes in 2009, a death row inmate appealed his sentence, arguing that once capital punishment has been repealed, it should be repealed for all, regardless of when the crime was committed. A judge in New Mexico rejected that argument.

Sen. John Kissel, a Republican from Enfield, whose district includes several prisons, asked what would happen to those who commit capital felony crimes in the future if capital punishment were replaced with life in prison without the possibility of parole.

He said he wants to make sure such prisoners remain segregated from the general prison population and given no perks if the death penalty is repealed.

once they pass this, they will stop at nothing to undermine what you claim today, talk is cheap.  Give it 5 - 10 years and then you all will be talking about parole due to good behavior, All you that vote for repeal, I am sure you feel safe in your gated communities, you have no clue 

[JTiscool]

I wish I could go there and help with the debate but sadly I would not be permitted to nor would my opinion be taken seriously.

[AnneTheBelgian]

http://www.ctmirror.org/story/15907/after-last-count-death-penalty-vote-likely-wednesday

After a last count, death penalty vote likely Wednesday

April 3, 2012

By Mark Pazniokas

With Gov. Dannel P. Malloy pledging to sign the bill into law, the state Senate is preparing for a vote as soon as Wednesday on a measure to repeal the death penalty for future crimes.

Leaders of the Senate Democratic majority intend Tuesday to canvass their 22 members for a final time, with the expectation of getting a commitment from at least 18 senators, the bare minimum necessary for passage.

"We'll make a final decision tomorrow," Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, said Monday night. "Do we want to move forward one way or the other? Yes."

Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, a longtime death-penalty opponent who presides over the Senate, is prepared to break a tie by casting a vote for repeal should the 36-member Senate deadlock.

If all three Democratic senators who have been publicly undecided cast a vote for repeal, the measure would pass with 19 votes. The three are Sen. Edith G. Prague of Columbia, Carlo Leone of Stamford and Joseph J. Crisco of Woodbridge.

"I feel good about the conversations we've been having with the members," said Sen. Eric Coleman, D-Bloomfield, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a proponent of repeal.

He declined to discuss conversations with specific senators, and he measured his words carefully in an interview Monday night. But when asked if he believed the Senate now had the votes for repeal, he replied, "I think so."

Leone and Crisco, who have voted against previous repeal bills, have said little publicly about how they intend to reach a decision.

Prague said she is leaning toward repeal, but only if she is assured her vote does not spare two of the 11 men now on Connecticut's death row: Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, convicted of a triple murder in the Cheshire home invasion.

"My fear is some innocent person will be sent to death row," Prague said. "By the same token, I couldn't live with myself if repeal got Komisarjevsky and Hayes to win an appeal to have their death penalties reversed."

If Connecticut repeals the death penalty for future crimes, it would join New Mexico as a state with men awaiting execution, even though it no longer can sentence anyone to death for new crimes.

New Mexico repealed its death penalty in 2009, but the law was written not to commute the sentences of two men already on death row.

In Connecticut, capital crimes now punishable by a death sentence would carry a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of release.

Connecticut's legislature also passed a repeal bill in 2009, but it was vetoed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell. Connecticut and New Hampshire are the only New England states with the death penalty.

Prague and Sen. Andrew Maynard, D-Stonington, who voted for repeal in 2009, when Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed a similar measure, blocked a vote last year when one of the Cheshire defendants still was awaiting trial.

Maynard is unconditionally committed for voting for repeal Wednesday, while Prague is demanding that a guarantee that Komisarjevsky and Hayes -- "those two monsters," as Prague calls them -- will not see their sentences reduced to life without parole by an appeals court.

Sen. Andrew Roraback, R-Goshen, who has previously voted for repeal, has made his vote conditional on the legislature repealing or significantly revising a law that awards inmates "risk reduction credits" that can reduce a sentence for good behavior.

Coleman said he was not optimistic of winning a vote from Roraback, who is seeking the Republican nomination for Congress in the 5th District.

If the vote is taken Wednesday, it will come during the holiest week of the Christian calendar.

The bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut intend to lead a march from Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Hartford to the state Capitol Tuesday morning, mixing religion and a demand for repeal.

They plan to enact the Stations of the Cross, depicting the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus. The Episcopal and Catholic bishops have lobbied for repeal and met with the governor.

Malloy held a press conference last week with Ben Jealous, the president and chief executive officer of the NAACP, which is leading an effort to abolish the death penalty nationally.

But Malloy has not directly lobbied legislators.

"I think everybody in the state of Connecticut knows what my position is," Malloy said. "To state it quite succinctly, if the legislature was to send me a bill that was prospective in nature, I would sign it."

Connecticut is one of 34 states with the death penalty. Of the 1,289 executions in the U.S. since capital punishment was reinstated, only one was in Connecticut: Michael Ross, who was put to death in 2005 at his request.

The U.S. was the only western democracy to carry out executions in 2011. With 43 executions, it is believed to have put more people to death than any other country except China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The other nations known to have had executions last year: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Egypt, Malaysia, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Yemen.







Anne

[k"KKK"hirschkorn]

Well looks like we lost a 2nd one...

[AnneTheBelgian]

http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/push-to-end-conn-death-penalty-faces-key-hurdle-1.3641948

April 4, 2012

Push to end Conn. death penalty faces key hurdle

Originally published: April 4, 2012 3:07 AM

Updated: April 4, 2012 12:05 PM

By The Associated Press  SHANNON YOUNG (Associated Press)

HARTFORD, Conn. - (AP) -- A push to abolish Connecticut's death penalty is facing a key hurdle with a vote Wednesday in the state Senate, where supporters say they have the votes to kick-start the process toward repeal.

The legislation would eliminate capital punishment for all future cases, but would not directly affect sentences of the 11 inmates currently on Connecticut's death row. Many officials insisted on that as a condition of their support for repeal in a state where two men were recently sentenced to death in a brutal, highly publicized 2007 home invasion.

If the measure is passed by the Senate, it will go the House of Representatives, where it is considered to have a high level of support, and then Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat who has said he would sign it into law.

"We intend to take a historic step today. We intend for Connecticut to become the 17th state to repeal the death penalty in the United States," said Senate President Donald Williams Jr., of Brooklyn.

Connecticut has carried out only one execution in 51 years, when serial killer Michael Ross was administered lethal injection in 2005.

In the last five years, four states have repealed the death penalty -- New Mexico, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. Governors in those states cited cases of innocent people being executed, and said the system was expensive and ineffective at deterring murder.

In the hours before the afternoon Senate session, Democrats proposed an amendment establishing harsh prison conditions for inmates who would have been candidates for the death penalty -- an apparent effort to win over Republicans who have expressed skepticism of the legislation.

The amendment announced by Williams would separate inmate housing, allow only non-contact visitation and mandate cell movement every 90 days to replicate conditions on death row.

"This is a severe and certain punishment. This does almost exactly mirror the conditions for those prisoners on death row," Williams said.

Support for the death penalty remains high in Connecticut, where a Quinnipiac University poll last month found 62 percent of residents do not support repeal. But state lawmakers on both sides of the issue have raised concerns on what the poll is actually reflecting, and the governor has said people should follow their conscience on the issue.

In 2009, a death penalty repeal bill passed the Connecticut legislature but was vetoed by then-Gov. Jodi Rell. Last year, a similar effort failed in the Senate due largely to an ongoing death penalty trial in the Cheshire home invasion, in which a woman and her two daughters were killed.

Executions nationwide have decreased steadily since they hit an all-time high of 98 executions in 1999 and have averaged at 44 a year since 2007, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.






Anne

[JTiscool]

Once the death penalty gets repealed in CT, I will never go there again. I will not feel safe there and I will not feel I would get the justice I deserved if I was murdered there.

Hopefully things will work out and the death penalty will not be repealed.

[AnneTheBelgian]

http://www.sj-r.com/breaking/x760623521/Connecticut-on-track-to-ban-death-penalty

Connecticut on track to ban death penalty

The Associated Press

Posted Apr 05, 2012 @ 11:02 AM

HARTFORD, Conn.— Connecticut is on track to become the fifth state in five years to abolish the death penalty amid what supporters say is a growing national sentiment against executing prisoners. 

The state Senate approved a repeal bill 20-16 early Thursday. It now goes to the House of Representatives, where lawmakers say the legislation has strong support.
 
Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy has said he will sign it into law. 

Connecticut would become the 17th state without a death penaltydays the last five years, New Mexico, Illinois, New Jersey and New York have ditched their death penalties. 

Officials with the Death Penalty Information Center say opposition to the death penalty has increased because DNA testing has exposed mistaken convictions and it’s becoming more expensive for states to pursue the cases.







Anne

[JTiscool]

That is really depressing.

[AnneTheBelgian]

http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Why-they-switched-their-votes-on-the-death-penalty-3463220.php#photo-2784683

Friday, April 06, 2012

Why they switched their votes on the death penalty

Ken Dixon

Published 11:50 p.m., Thursday, April 5, 2012

HARTFORD -- Visits to Connecticut prisons, the death of loved ones and even random conversations on a train platform informed and tempered the 10-and-a-half-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 three 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 two 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.








Photos : 1. Sen. Gayle Slossberg, D-14, formerly an opponent of the death penalty repeal, voted for the repeal in the early morning hours of Thursday, April 5, 2012. Photo: Contributed Photo, ST / Connecticut Post Contributed

              2. Senator Joe Crisco, D-17, formerly an opponent of the death penalty repeal, voted for the repeal in the early morning hours of Thursday, April 5, 2012. Photo: Contributed Photo, Contributed Photo / Connecticut Post Contributed

              3. State Sen. Bob Duff., formerly an opponent of the death penalty repeal, voted for the repeal in the early morning hours of Thursday, April 5, 2012. Photo: File Photo / CT

              4. State Senator Carlo Leone formerly an opponent of the death penalty repeal, voted for the repeal in the early morning hours of Thursday, April 5, 2012. Photo: Dru Nadler, File Photo / Stamford Advocate Freelance





Anne

[k"KKK"hirschkorn]

This is just sick.

[JTiscool]

What a bunch of idiots.

Their soul searching is leading them to rewarding murderers rather than punishing them. Why the hell should they be pity'd. Those murderers are the ones who got themselves in that mess to begin with.

Words cannot describe...ugh 

[J - Dog]

"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."

Careful with your stupid words, just wait, that crap you pass off as a great quote, might find itself unconsitutional.  So are you throwing them in solitary? Please clarify what is more punishment??   


Just wait until another freaking nasty serial killer roams your neighborhood...bound to happen and then they snatch your innocent daughter, neice, brother, or sister, then what.  You are down with it, so long as you don't have to think about death.  Death, such a horrible outcome. 

World has gone mad 

Bastards all of you!!

[JTiscool]

I don't want to live in this world anymore as I've mentioned on another thread 

[AnneTheBelgian]

http://www.housatonictimes.com/articles/2012/04/09/news/doc4f8324e5d96fd883857602.txt

Death Penalty Vote Will Bring Questions About Inmates' Futures

Published: Monday, April 09, 2012

By MARY E. O’LEARY

New Haven Register Topics Editor

HARTFORD — Now that Connecticut is on the verge of becoming the 17th state to reject the death penalty, the only question is what will happen to the 11 men currently on death row, in various stages of appeal.

The bill recently passed by the state Senate on a 20-to-16 vote applies the repeal to future cases. The clear intent, as stated repeatedly in debate last week, is to proceed with the 11 death sentences already handed down.

Democratic supporters of repeal—including Senate Majority Leader Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, who has lobbied for repeal for decades—say there are examples of the courts upholding prospective changes that will allow the death penalty revisions to stand.

Republican opponents, who favor continuing with the infrequently used punishment, counter that an appeal of the changes is a certainty and that the court will not allow the state to execute the 11 based on constitutional grounds.

Only two men on death row have been executed in Connecticut since 1960, one of them only after he voluntarily gave up his appeals and argued for his own execution.

It is generally conceded that the policy change was crafted prospectively to get enough state senators to agree to the legislation. The legislators wanted to be assured that the men on death row, particularly two recently convicted and sentenced to death for their roles in the notorious murder of three members of the Petit family in Cheshire, will at some point be executed.

The bill could come up for a vote in the House as early as next week, where it is expected to pass, and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has promised to sign it.

The harshest punishment in Connecticut for murder under special circumstances then would be life in prison with no possibility of release.

An amendment to the bill applies the treatment now afforded death row inmates to future felons sentenced to life in prison. They would spend 22 hours a day in their cells, be segregated from the rest of the prison population, be subject to frequent searches and be allowed no physical contact with visitors.

Those in favor of repeal argue that the estimated $4 million spent each year by the state on appeals, which can extend for decades, is a waste of state resources; the death penalty is discriminatory by race and geography; it is not a deterrent to murder, and any mistakes are irreversible. Opponents of repeal said the punishment is the correct one for the most egregious crimes and there is no evidence that the 11 are not guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted.

Each commentator, in explaining his or her position, begins by saying that, ultimately, there is no certainty as to how a state Supreme Court challenge would come down, and the divergence of opinion on the issue extends beyond the legislature in Hartford.

William Dunlap, professor of law at Quinnipiac University, said he feels the revised policy, if adopted, can survive a challenge.

Whether one thinks of it as bad policy is irrelevant and of no interest to the court, Professor Dunlap said, and will not be the basis of a successful appeal. But he did not think the public defenders who might bring the challenge would win with an equal protection case either.

Professor Dunlap, who personally favors a complete abolition of the death penalty, as many supporters of repeal do, said the decision was understandably a political one involving a compromise to maximize the number of votes for repeal.

Republicans who favor maintaining the death penalty put forth several legal arguments.

State Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, said no state Supreme Court in the country has addressed the constitutionality of repealing the death penalty prospectively, including New Mexico, which is the only one to date who has repealed it for future crimes.

Mr. McKinney said the New Mexico Supreme Court has ruled that defense lawyers can make clear to jurors in the penalty phase of a capital case that the state has abolished its death penalty going forward.

He said it was a “misreading” of that case to say there is a precedent in that at least one state Supreme Court had upheld prospective application of executions. “It is a fallacy that the New Mexico decision reached the constitutional question,” he said.

Mr. McKinney offered that no high court wants to decide a constitutional issue before it has to, and, in the case of New Mexico, there will be no need to do so if the jury sentences the defendant to life in prison, rather than death. He argued that it makes no difference whether the intent of the lawmakers is to continue to move toward execution for the 11 on death row, but state Sen. Eric Coleman, D-Bloomfield, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the high court gives great weight to legislative intent.

The amendment describing the living conditions of future convicts serving a life sentence also applies to those on death row, if a court commutes their sentences. Mr. McKinney said this kind of language “sends a message to the court” that lawmakers assume this is a possibility.

State Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, another strong supporter of the death penalty, said public defenders will argue under the 14th Amendment that the new policy represents “evolving social norms of human decency” and they will use this to get inmates off death row.

Mr. Coleman said the men sentenced to death before any policy change are different than future criminals. “It is not a protected class of individuals. They are not similarly situated to those convicted afterwards,” he said.

“There would be no equal protection infirmity” in the policy, Mr. Coleman contends.

Local defense lawyer Hugh Keefe said the likelihood that the 11 on death row will ever be subjected to a lethal injection are almost nonexistent.

“The chance of any of those guys being put to death is about as great as winning that $500 million lottery last week. It is just not going to happen,” Mr. Keefe said. “You can’t have the ultimate penalty depend on when you committed a crime. There is something inherently unconstitutional about that.”

A longtime opponent of the death penalty, Mr. Coleman said lawmakers over the years have amended the death penalty and the courts have not applied those changes retroactively.

In 1846, the death penalty was changed from mandatory for all convicted murderers to allow for certain instances when it would not be applicable. Degrees of murder charges were introduced.

In 1951, lawmakers gave the court the option of death row or life in prison for those convicted of first-degree murder. Later, there were changes on the use of aggravating and mitigating factors in deciding a death sentence. If there was only one mitigating factor, the death penalty was off the table. Now, jurors look at the weight of both factors in making their decision.





Anne