Connecticut top court to hear new arguments on death penalty ban

[January 07, 2016]  By Richard Weizel
 
 MILFORD, Conn. (Reuters) - Connecticut prosecutors are scheduled on Thursday to make their case that the 11 inmates remaining on the state's death row could still be executed despite an August state Supreme Court ruling that the penalty could no longer be imposed.

The state's top court ruled 4-3 last year that a 2012 state law banning the issuance of new death sentences, but allowing executions to go ahead for people previously sentenced to death, amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

That decision came in the case of Eduardo Santiago, who was convicted of the 2000 murder of the romantic rival of an associate in exchange for a snowblower.

Thursday's arguments at the state Supreme Court will be tied to the case of Russell Peeler Jr., sentenced to death for ordering the 1999 killing of an 8-year-old boy and his mother because he believed the child had planned to testify against him in another case.

State prosecutors are expected to argue that the court overreached its authority when it determined that legislators could not exempt people previously sentenced to death from the new ban on the punishment.

"The court took the unprecedented step of mining the legislative history, including the speeches of legislators and witnesses during debates and hearings, for ambiguity, and employing that ambiguity to justify interposing its own conclusion," prosecutors wrote in a 35-page briefing dotted with references to Connecticut's history as a British colony and the Old Testament of the Bible.

Lawyers for Peeler argued that allowing his execution to go forward would undercut the public's trust in the fairness of the law.

"The contradictory rulings sought by the state on the grave matter of life and death would seriously undermine the rule of law," they wrote.

Nineteen U.S. states have banned the death penalty, while 31 still have it on the books. Twenty-eight people were put to death in the United States last year.

Connecticut has not executed a prisoner since 2005, when serial killer Michael Ross, who admitted killing eight women in the 1980s, was put to death by lethal injection.

(Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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