death penalty news
January 30, 2005
CONNECTICUT:
Strange Timing For Death-penalty Debate - Legislature Considers Issue On
Day Planned For Execution Of Ross
The chronology had always seemed a little screwy: The legislature's
Judiciary Committee was to assemble for a debate on Monday on the issue of
capital punishment, shortly after the state put a man to death.
Then came the last-minute decision early Saturday morning to postpone
serial killer Michael Ross' execution to 9 p.m. Monday. That surprising
turn scrambled prison plans, upended reporters and left the families of his
victims, once again, in anguished limbo.
But the postponement of the lethal-injection execution gave the committee's
scheduled hearing a flash of relevance. If it ends on time at 7 p.m., the
lawmakers will even have plenty of time to ride up to Enfield and join the
gathering of media and execution witnesses to see in person what it is they
have been talking about.
The committee will take up a proposal on Monday to strike down the death
penalty, which was reinstated in 1976, and replace it with life in prison
without the possibility of release as the state's harshest criminal punishment.
It is a proposal that supporters say will help the families of victims the
most by stashing sadistic killers out of the public eye and allowing the
survivors to move on with life. It is also a proposal they say has no
chance of becoming law.
"We're not taking any action other than discussing it," said Rep. Michael
Lawlor, D-East Haven, the committee's co-chairman and a death-penalty opponent.
"I don't think anyone's arguing," he added, "that the votes are there to
repeal the death penalty."
The slow, bureaucratic grind toward Connecticut's first execution in 45
years has made capital punishment and its application a dominant issue in
the state Capitol.
A heavily traveled hallway in the complex is decorated with black-and-white
photographs of prisons and condemned prisoners.
Supporters of capital punishment, including Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a
Republican, and House Speaker James Amann, a Democrat, have called for the
execution to proceed. Others have clamored for the state to hurry the
process along.
Anti-death-penalty lawmakers have huddled in solidarity, mulling strategies
for winning over their more numerous counterparts.
One among them, Rep. William Dyson, D-New Haven, camped out on a folding
chair in the lobby of the legislative office building last week, trying to
convince colleagues to debate the execution before it took place.
But as Ross' case skidded from courtroom to courtroom in the past few
weeks, up and down the East Coast from Hartford to Manhattan and
Washington, D.C., there hasn't been much action in the halls of the
legislature.
Rell has promised to veto any repeal of the death penalty, and that would
happen only if death- penalty opponents were to pull off a minor miracle
and pass it.
Even as the eve of execution has come and gone and come again, they are
eager to debate the law that Lawlor calls "a fraud." But they see no chance
of changing it.
"We have not seen in recent history one execution having any legislative
effect in the state where it occurred," said David Elliot, the
communications director for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death
Penalty. "One execution simply doesn't change the terrain of the debate.
Michael Ross' execution would neither cause Connecticut legislators to
immediately abolish the death penalty, nor will it usher in an era when
executions are more acceptable."
But the "circus-like atmosphere" of the Ross case, he said, could have a
direct effect on the rest of the Northeast.
"It is going to hasten abolition in both New Jersey and New York," Elliot
said.
Neither of those states has executed a prisoner since 1963, and New York's
death-penalty law has been struck down as unconstitutional by a state
court. Though there is a movement to reinstate the law, he said, "We think
this is going to cause legislators in New York to question whether they
want this type of circus coming to their town."
Elliot added, "We don't see abolition in Connecticut as something that will
necessarily happen in the next two months. But we do see it's likely to
happen in the cycle of about the next two or four or six years."
All Rep. Steve Mikutel cares about right now is the next two days.
The Griswold Democrat represents the hometown of Ross' two youngest
victims, April Brunais and Leslie Shelley, and is something of a
self-appointed spokesman for their families.
"Michael Lawlor does not speak for the majority of people of the state of
Connecticut," Mikutel said Saturday. "He certainly does not speak for the
(families of) victims of Michael Ross, who almost to a person believe the
death penalty is proper and appropriate in the Michael Ross case."
Mikutel has little use for a discussion of capital punishment.
"Some people want to have this debate because they think it will make them
feel better," he said.
(source: The Day)
