The legislative repeal of Connecticut's death penalty is reverberating through the judicial system, including in an appeal brought by a death row inmate that the state Supreme Court is expected to rule on in part this week.
A recently filed motion seeks oral arguments and permission from the Supreme Court to file briefs to "address the impact" of the new law on the appeal of convicted killer Eduardo Santiago. The court has not heard those arguments, and it's unclear what effect a decision by the court could have on the new motion.
The repeal, signed into law in April, abolishes the death penalty for future capital crimes committed in Connecticut but allows executions for those who committed capital crimes before the new law was passed.
The July 2007 murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petitand her daughters, Hayley and Michaela, clearly were on the minds of lawmakers who blocked past efforts to repeal the death penalty. This year, legislators struck what they considered to be a compromise, making defendants already on death row, including convicted Cheshire killers Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, still eligible for death by lethal injection.
Since the repeal was signed into law, defense attorneys have been looking for ways to challenge the prospective provision.
Source: courant.com, June 3, 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment