Today's New York Times reports, "Murder Trial Puts Death Penalty in Spotlight in Connecticut Campaigns." It's written by Paul Bass.
If Dannel P. Malloy’s gubernatorial campaign had the authority to set Connecticut’s court calendar, it probably would have scheduled the state’s most sensational murder trial for some other time. Like after Election Day.
As it is, the trial of Steven J. Hayes , one of two men accused of rape and murder in a Cheshire home invasion, has been riveting the state all fall, increasing the majority of voters who tell pollsters they support the death penalty.
Mr. Malloy is one of two Democrats in this fall’s two marquee races in Connecticut — for governor and United States Senate — who have called for the abolition of the death penalty. The other is Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic candidate for the Senate seat being vacated by Christopher J. Dodd.
The two candidates have ended up in different places and have taken different approaches this campaign season, as the Hayes trial kicked up questions about the death penalty and its enforcement.
In the 1980s, Mr. Blumenthal testified in the State Legislature in favor of abolishing Connecticut’s death penalty statute. He did so after representing a Florida death row inmate named Joseph Green Brown, who was wrongly convicted. Mr. Blumenthal succeeded in staving off the man’s execution just 15 hours before it was scheduled to take place.
That was then. At a news conference following a Senate campaign debate on Oct. 4. Mr. Blumenthal was asked about that position. He acknowledged it, then noted that as far back as 1990 his changed view had been on public record. “When I started running for attorney general, I supported the death penalty,” he said. “I’m a strong supporter now.”
Mr. Blumenthal argues that DNA advances since the 1980s have reduced the chances of false convictions.
Case closed. He and his Republican opponent, Linda McMahon, went back to trashing each other — she portrayed by Mr. Blumenthal as a heartless, outsourcing private employer hostile to the minimum wage, and he labeled by Ms. McMahon as a mendacious, clueless, job-killing career politician. No more talk about the death penalty.
In the governor’s race, on the other hand, Mr. Malloy never stops hearing about his opposition to the death penalty in light of the shocking murder of Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, and the beating of their father, Dr. William A. Petit. When he held a news conference on expanding Connecticut’s ports, Mr. Malloy was asked about it. In debates and on the campaign trail, his Republican opponent, Thomas C. Foley, who supports the death penalty, makes sure to mention it and try to force him to reiterate his position.
Mr. Malloy has stuck by his opposition. He has promised to sign a bill to abolish the death penalty if elected. (One of his early supporters, State Representative Gary A. Holder-Winfield of New Haven, succeeded in getting such a bill passed in 2009, only to have Gov. M. Jodi Rell veto it.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll released last week, 65 percent of voters expressed support for the death penalty, up from 60 percent a year earlier. A mere 23 percent were opposed. More than three-quarters supported giving the Cheshire defendants the death penalty.
Here's coverage of last week's Quinnipiac polling. "Support for Conn. death penalty hits 10-year high," is the AP post, via the New Haven Register.
Support for Connecticut's death penalty has reached its highest point in more than a decade, and even some who generally oppose capital punishment say it's appropriate for a man convicted in the 2007 deadly Cheshire home invasion, according to a new poll.
Quinnipiac University's poll, released Wednesday, found 65 percent of those surveyed support the death penalty. That's up from 61 percent two years ago, and the highest number since the year 2000.
It comes as Steven Hayes faces sentencing this month after being convicted of murder, rape and other charges for his part in the 2007 deaths of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley and Michaela.
Prosecutors are asking jurors to send him to death row.
And:
The pollsters did not ask specifically about voters' views on Komisarjevsky's fate if he is convicted, though they found 98 percent of those surveyed had read about the case.
Three of every four people surveyed favored the death penalty for Hayes, with 18 percent against it and 6 percent undecided. Men were slightly more likely to support it than women.
There are 10 inmates on death row in Connecticut, though one awaits a new trial based on legal questions over whether a baby was born dead or alive after he killed its mother.
The last person executed in Connecticut was serial killer Michael Ross in 2005.
The General Assembly approved a ban in 2009 on imposing the death penalty for future convictions — which would have included Hayes — but not retroactively for death row inmates, whose cases are in various stages of appeals.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed the ban, saying the state cannot tolerate people who commit particularly heinous murders.
John Lender writes, "76% Back Death Penalty For Hayes, New Poll Shows," for the Hartford Courant.
Nearly two-thirds of Connecticut voters favor the death penalty for murder, in general, while even more think it's appropriate for Steven Hayes, who has been convicted of killing a Cheshire woman and her two daughters, a Quinnipiac University Poll released Wednesday shows.
The poll shows that 65 percent of those surveyed support the death penalty in general — slightly higher than in recent years, when support has "hovered" about 60 percent, Quinnipiac poll Director Douglas Schwartz said.
When asked specifically about Hayes, 76 percent said they support the death penalty. Hayes was found guilty Oct. 5 in the 2007 home invasion that resulted in the deaths of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. Hayes now awaits the penalty phase of his trial, scheduled to begin Monday. Each of his six capital-felony convictions is punishable by death.Schwartz said that "support for the death penalty in a specific case can be higher than support in general. This is because some voters who oppose the death penalty in general support it for a particularly heinous crime."
Support for the death penalty dipped when people were given the alternative of jailing murderers for life with no chance of parole, the poll showed. When asked which they preferred, 46 percent chose the death penalty, 41 percent said life without parole, and 14 percent didn't know or had no response.
The death penalty divides the two major-party candidates for governor, though only 6 percent of those polled said they would vote for governor based on that issue alone. Dannel Malloy, the Democrat, opposes the death penalty, and his opponent, Republican Tom Foley, favors it.
On October 10th, the Courant ran the editorial, "Repeal The Death Penalty."
When better to discuss the use of capital punishment in Connecticut than in the midst of a heated election campaign and a ghastly murder trial?
Both the Nov. 2 election for governor and the conviction last week of Steven Hayes in the horrific 2007 deaths of a mother and her two daughters in Cheshire will have a definitive impact on whether death by lethal injection continues to be a punishment option in this state
We hope that it does not — that lawmakers and the next governor can summon the courage to substitute life in prison without parole as the ultimate penalty for capital crimes.
And:
Finally, the death penalty puts the state in a morally compromised position. As horrible as some crimes are and as evil as many of the perpetrators may be, the state should not be in their same business, the business of death.
Better for society — and a worse punishment for the guilty — is to let the killer live with himself and his crime for life without hope of freedom.
Earlier coverage from Connecticut begins with this post.
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