Today's Hartford Courant carries the editorial, "Death Penalty Repeal Is Half-Baked; Is it really repeal with 11 men still on death row?"
The Senate's vote to repeal the state's death penalty is cause for celebration among those who abhor capital punishment — but also cause for consternation. The issue is still unsettled.
The measure written by the majority Democrats would abolish the ultimate penalty going forward. The 11 men now on death row, however, would still face execution. If it makes it past the House, Gov.Dannel P. Malloy has said he would sign such a half-baked bill.
The Democratic leaders apparently didn't have the votes to do away completely with capital punishment, as they should have. This compromise may have been the only way to secure the backing of conflicted senators like Edith Prague, a Democrat who blocked repeal last year because of the horrific murders of a mother and her two daughters in their Cheshire home in 2007.
And:
The Courant votes for total repeal. The costs of capital punishment, both monetary and moral, are too high, and the benefits are questionable. It's costing millions of dollars to keep up the charade, and the debate is distracting the state from more solvable problems, such as creating jobs. Plus the best econometric measures in the land can't prove that it deters crime.
Maybe the most eloquent argument for repeal was offered by Eric Coleman: "I don't see how we make the point that killing is wrong by killing," said the Democratic senator from Bloomfield.
A death penalty that doesn't work, however, seems to mirror the state's ambivalence on this difficult issue. A majority of the citizenry, when polled, say they support the death penalty — especially when a horrific crime like the Petit family murders are fresh in their minds. But support falls to less than half when the public is asked to choose between death and life in prison without parole.
So this latest bill — this befuddlingly bifurcated sentencing scheme — continues the state's vacillation over the death penalty, repealing it but not really. The death sentence should be put to rest.
The Day's editorial is, "Senate's (qualified) profile in courage."
We applaud the courage of 20 state senators Thursday to vote their convictions in approving a repeal of the death penalty. These senators know that public opinion polls show a majority of voters continue to support state executions, but they did what they thought was right and we agree with them. The state senators representing the region, all Democrats, supported repeal: Edith Prague, Andrew Maynard, Andrea Stillman and Eileen Daily.
It now seems only a matter of time for Connecticut's death penalty law to pass into history. Approval in the House appears certain and a vote could come within a week. When he was campaigning for office in 2010, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy made it clear he would sign a death penalty repeal bill if given the chance.
As a newspaper that has long advocated for ending the practice of state-sanctioned executions, The Day is glad to see Connecticut about to join 16 other states and the vast majority of democracies in concluding that blood revenge has no place in civilized society. In the past five years, four other states have abolished the death penalty - New Mexico, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. That's an encouraging trend.
And:
In reality, once this law passes, it is highly unlikely the courts will approve the execution of any of the 11. And we suspect the senators who voted in favor know that.
"I think you need to know when you're considering your votes on this what's real and what's not. What this law would do would create two classes of people. One class would be subject to the death penalty; the other class would not, and that would not be because of the nature of the crime or the nature of the defendant - it would be because of the date on which the crime occurred," said Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane, the state's top prosecutor, in his testimony to the legislature.
That kind of arbitrary distinction, Mr. Kane told lawmakers, would be extremely unlikely to hold up on appeal.
When it comes to gathering up enough votes, sometimes such a fig leaf is required. So be it. It's a small concession to make to end the media circus that surrounds death penalty trials, the endless appeals, the pain of making families relive the crime over and over, the empty promises that revenge will bring relief and "closure."
There is also additional news coverage. Let's begin with, "Abolitionist’s Dream Nears Reality With 1 Bump," by Paul Bass in the New Haven Independent.
Normally, Gary Holder-Winfield wouldn’t vote to create a death row-like prison wing to replace capital punishment. But history is calling.
So—probably next week—the New Haven state representative (pictured) plans to vote yes on a bill to abolish the death penalty. Even though it creates the new system for imprisoning people who commit the most heinous murders, an idea he finds counterproductive.
Holder-Winfield, after all, is the legislator who first convinced colleagues at the state Capitol that Connecticut could, in fact, repeal the death penalty. He overcame long odds and decades of conventional wisdom to introduce and help get the legislature to pass repeal in his first term, in 2009. Then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed the bill that year. But Holder-Winfield and fellow abolitionists helped elect a pro-repeal governor, Dannel P. Malloy. They brought the bill back—and appear to be winning this time.
And:
New Haven state Sen. Martin Looney, who helped shepherd the abolition bill to passage early Thursday morning, defended the amendment as accomplishing one of the bill’s broader goals—making justice less “arbitrary.”Thursday’s vote represented the capstone of a decades-long fight for Looney; he first tried to get the death penalty repealed as a state representative 25 years ago.
"Why they switched their votes on the death penalty," by Ken Dixon in the Greenwich Time.
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 made the finality of death hit home, 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 help 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.
"1 House Down, 1 To Go On Death Penalty Bill," is the Hartford Courant follow-up by Daniela Altimari.
With perhaps its toughest test safely behind it, a bill to repeal Connecticut's death penalty is on its way to the House of Representative for a vote as soon as advocates can schedule one.
"If I were guessing, I'd say you'd see the bill in the next week and a half,'' Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, D-New Haven, said Thursday afternoon, about 13 hours after it cleared the state Senate on a 20-16 vote.
Holder-Winfield, a leading proponent of repeal, said he was confident the bill would win approval in the House "and when the session ends, the Connecticut legislature will have voted to abolish the death penalty." Gov.Dannel P. Malloyhas said he will sign the legislation once it reaches his desk.
That would make Connecticut the 17th state to abolish the death penalty. For opponents of capital punishment, the state is a key piece in their strategy to take the question of the constitutionality of the death penalty to theU.S. Supreme Courtonce at least 26 states have done away with the practice.
The revised AP report on the repeal vote is, "Connecticut moves to abolish death penalty," by Shannon Young and Andrew Welsh Huggins. It's via the San Francisco Chronicle.
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 two men sentenced to death for the 2007 home invasion attack in the New Haven suburb of Cheshire. They include two 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.
"Death Penalty Death Watch: Abolition in Connecticut," is Andrew Rosenthal's Loyal Opposition blog post at the New York Times.
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 two 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 two 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.
Earlier coverage of the Connecticut repeal legislation begins with the text of Sen. Gayle Senator Slossberg’s Remarks on Death Penalty Repeal.
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