Conn. lawmakers push anew for death penalty repeal

HARTFORD, Conn. — Some state lawmakers are reviving a push to end Connecticut's death penalty, hoping for an easier road this year following the conclusion of two widely publicized trials for a brutal 2007 triple slaying.

While the only survivor of the Cheshire home invasion personally lobbied legislators last year to keep the death penalty, at least one state senator who was swayed by Dr. William Petit says he is now ready to vote for repeal.

"Last year was not an appropriate time to discuss (repeal)," said Sen. Andrew Maynard, a Stonington Democrat.

Petit's influence helped to doom last year's bid to repeal the death penalty, which never made it to the Senate floor for a vote. Since then, a man described as the crime's mastermind has been condemned to join his co-defendant on death row, closing the case on the attack in which Petit's wife and two daughters were killed.

State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, a New Haven Democrat and a leading death penalty opponent, said he is working with state legislators to win their support. He said members of the joint judiciary committee plan to propose legislation sometime before a Feb. 22 deadline to introduce new bills. He said he is dedicated to working with state senators to win their support.

Death penalty opponents say there is already enough support for repeal in the House of Representatives

Columbia Sen. Edith Prague, another key Democrat who shifted her position after meeting with Petit, said she has not decided whether to support a repeal effort this session. She said she may support abolishing capital punishment if current death row inmates could be subject to life in prison with solitary confinement, but needs to look further into whether or not that would be legal.

"There's still a lot of support for the death penalty in this state," she said. "I'm not sure what will happen this session."

Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who was elected in 2010, said he would sign prospective repeal legislation into law that abolishes capital punishment for all future cases and does not directly affect sentences of current death row inmates. He is the first governor in decades to oppose the death penalty. The legislature had voted to repeal it in 2009, but then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a Republican, vetoed the bill, saying she believed the death penalty was appropriate for particularly heinous crimes, such as the Cheshire home invasion.