"Death Penalty Repeal Goes to Connecticut Governor," is the New York Times report by Peter Applebome.
After more than nine hours of debate, the Connecticut House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to repeal the state’s death penalty, following a similar vote in the State Senate last week. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, has said he will sign the bill, which would make Connecticut the 17th state — the 5th in five years — to abolish capital punishment for future cases.
Mr. Malloy’s signature will leave New Hampshire and Pennsylvania as the only states in the Northeast that still have the death penalty. New Jersey repealed it in 2007. New York’s statute was ruled unconstitutional by the state’s highest court in 2004, and lawmakers have not moved to fix the law.
The vote, after more than two decades of debate and the 2009 veto of a similar bill by the governor at the time, M. Jodi Rell, a Republican, came against the backdrop of one of the state’s most horrific crimes: a 2007 home invasion in Cheshire in which Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, were held hostage and murdered, two of the three raped, and their house set afire by two habitual criminals who are now on death row. Ms. Hawke-Petit’s husband, Dr. William A. Petit Jr., who was badly beaten but escaped, has since been an ardent advocate for keeping the death penalty.
The bill exempts the 11 men currently on death row, including Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven J. Hayes, the men convicted of the Petit murders.
The measure was approved by a vote of 86 to 62, largely along party lines.
The legislation will make life in prison without possibility of parole the state’s harshest punishment. It mandates that those given life without parole be incarcerated separately from other inmates and be limited to two hours a day outside the prison cell.
The AP post is, "Connecticut House approves repeal of death penalty," by Shannon Young. It's via the Norwich Bulletin.
The legislation, which would make Connecticut the 17th state to abolish the death penalty, awaits a signature from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who has said he would sign the bill into law.
"Going forward, we will have a system that allows us to put these people away for life, in living conditions none of us would want to experience," the Democratic governor said in a statement following the vote. "Let's throw away the key and have them spend the rest of their natural lives in jail."
"House Votes To Repeal Death Penalty," by Daniela Altimari for the Hartford Courant.
The Connecticut House of Representatives late Wednesday gave final legislative approval to a measure repealing the state's seldom-used death penalty after more than 9 1/2 hours of often gut-wrenching debate.
Senate Bill 280 cleared the House 86-62, a vote that broke largely along party lines. The bill now goes to Gov.Dannel P. Malloy, who has pledged to sign it, ending a form of punishment in the state that dates back to Colonial times when those convicted of being witches were sent to the gallows.
"This vote tonight ... allows Connecticut to break with a centuries-old tradition of executing people and rejoin the rest of the Western world, which has long since cut bait with the death penalty,'' said Benjamin Todd Jealous, the national president of the NAACP, who watched the back-and-forth from the House gallery. "It also moves our nation forward."
And:
Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, one of the most vigorous supporters of the repeal effort, didn't dispute Cafero's view that the prospective part of the bill was born as a compromise. "But the reality is I am in a room with 150 other people and I'm not so young that I believe … I know everything,'' said the New Haven Democrat. "Part of what we do here is, we figure out how do we make things happen."
Holder-Winfield said he favors complete abolition, even for the 11 occupants of death row. But, he said, "If I can't get the state to stop executing people that are already on death row, at least I can stop the state from executing people that may be on death row in the future."
"House passes death penalty repeal bill," by JC Reindl in the Day.
The 151-member House took up the repeal bill at about 1:20 p.m. and lawmakers debated for more than 9½ hours.
The final vote tally was largely along party lines, with most Democrats in favor of repeal and Republicans opposed to it. The vote was closer this year than three years ago, when the House passed a similar repeal bill, 90 to 56.
Death penalty supporters tried unsuccessfully to attach amendments to retain the death penalty for certain offenses. There were proposed exceptions for a lethal act of terrorism, murder of a state trooper or local police officer, and murder committed in the course of a rape or a deadly home invasion.
"State House votes to repeal death penalty," by Ken Dixon of CT Post, for the Danbury News Times.
In the future, capital felons -- the state's worst killers -- would face a new charge of murder under special circumstances, with a penalty of life in prison without the possibility of release from maximum-security conditions.
The legislation passed after nine-and-a-half hours of debate and 11 Republican amendments, which would have forced the bill back to the Senate, failed. The GOP amendments would have retained the death penalty for a variety of offenses, including terrorism, killing cops, prison guards and residents during home invasions.
At the nine-hour mark, Republicans proposed a final amendment to allow for a non-binding statewide referendum on the death penalty. It failed 93-54.
"Death Penalty Repeal Headed to Governor’s Desk," by Hugh McQuaid of CT News Junkie in the New Haven Register.
But the brutal murder of a Cheshire family in 2007 loomed large over Wednesday’s debate. The sole survivor, Dr. William Petit, has been a vocal advocate of the death penalty. Last year, he convinced enough state senators to withdraw, at least temporarily, their support of a repeal bill so that it was never called for a vote.
This year, the repeal measure was revived and cleared the Senate on a 20-16 vote last week after a handful of senators visited two prisons. They decided they could go along with repeal as long as murderers serve their life sentences in the starkest conditions — conditions that at least one Connecticut columnist described as “isolation torture.”
Although Petit did not make an appearance at the Capitol on Wednesday, many lawmakers focused on the fate of Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, the two men sentenced to death for killing Petit’s wife, Jennifer Hawke Petit, and their two daughters, Hayley and Michaela.
And:
Although their cases weren’t mentioned as prominently as the Petit case, hundreds of family members of murder victims have called for the repeal. Several appeared at a press conference with the bill’s main proponent, Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, Wednesday morning.
Holder-Winfield attempted to make sure their voices were heard when he made his remarks on House floor Wednesday night.
“If you look up in the gallery, there are people who had very terrible things happen to family members, who come to this building asking us to repeal the death penalty,” Holder-Winfield said. “And the reality is, some of them have not had an audience.”
"With House vote, Malloy to sign death penalty repeal," by Keith M. Phaneuf for CT Mirror.
The bill passed with votes from 78 of 99 Democrats and eight of 52 Republicans. Senate Democrats passed the bill 20-16 last week, with two Democrats joining all 14 Republicans in opposition.
And:
"Despite having the death penalty in oiur society here in Connecticut for several hundred years ... it certainly hasn't eradicated evil from our society," said House Majority Leader J. Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden. "If we as human beings created laws that reciprocate the evil that's perpetrated on society, are they really protecting us? ... Our laws more project our better selves."
Though Connecticut imposes the death sentence on only the most horrific of crimes, Rep. Terry Backer, D-Stratford, noted that there have been nearly 290 post-conviction exonerations of death row inmates in the United States since the late 1970s.
"I am torn in two," he said, "but it is my innate feeling that government makes mistakes."
"We must always be aware that government makes mistakes and the death penalty is irreversible," said Rep. Mary Mushinsky, D-Wallingford. Recounting the tale of Kenneth Ireland Jr., Mushinksy noted how the resident of her town served 21 years in prison until DNA evidence cleared him in 2009 of a wrongful murder conviction.
Earlier coverage of Connecticut's road to repeal begins at the link.
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