"Conn. lawmakers take up death penalty repeal bill,"is the updated AP report via Comcast's NECN.
Connecticut lawmakers are once again considering whether to repeal the state's death penalty.
The General Assembly's Judiciary Committee was holding a public hearing Monday on legislation that would replace capital punishment with life in prison without the possibility of release for certain murders.
The proposal would affect only those crimes committed on or after the new legislation would become law. However, both the state's chief prosecutor and chief public defender agreed it would likely affect those currently on Connecticut's death row because a repeal would unfairly create two classes of people — one subject to the death penalty, the other not.
Legislators passed a similar bill in 2009 but then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed it. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has said he would sign the legislation.
Today's CT Mirror carries, "Wyman could be crucial on death penalty, paid sick days," by Mark Pazniokas.
If Connecticut is to abolish the death penalty this year, the deciding vote in the Senate most likely will belong to the presiding officer, Lt. Gov. Nancy S. Wyman. The same is true of a bill mandating private employers to provide paid six days.
The best that proponents of either controversial measure can manage this year appears to be an 18-18 tie in the Senate, giving Wyman two relatively rare opportunities to cast tie-breaking votes in her first year in office.
Wyman, one of the state's most popular Democrats, said she has no reluctance being identified as the deciding vote on either issue.
"It's something we talked about during the campaign," Wyman said of the two pieces of legislation. "It's something I believe in. Those are very, very easy."
Now, all they have to do is make it to a vote in the Senate.
The legislature's Judiciary Committee today is holding a public hearing on the death penalty, the beginning of the second try in three years to make capital crimes in Connecticut punishable by life in prison without possibility of parole.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed a bill in 2009 that would have abolished the death penalty for future crimes. The bill was written prospectively as not to affect the prosecutions of the two defendants in the Cheshire home invasion and triple homicide.
It passed easily in the House, 90 to 56, but the Senate vote was close, 19 to 17. Two Democrats who voted for repeal have since been replaced by two Republican supporters of capital punishment, leaving the abolition camp short one vote.
Sen. Theresa Gerratana, D-New Britain, who recently succeeded a Democratic death penalty supporter, has not declared her position, but she is believed by proponents of the abolition bill to be inclined toward becoming the 18th vote in favor of passage.
And that would set up Wyman as the tie-breaking vote.
Wyman, who was elected last fall as Dannel P. Malloy's running mate, served in the House of Representatives for eight years before her election as comptroller in 1994. She said she has voted to abolish the death penalty before.
"I've never believed in the death penalty. I believe in abolishing it. I've always said that. I've always voted that way in the legislature," Wyman said.
Earlier coverage from Connecticut begins at the link.
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