nothin Abolitionist’s Dream Nears Reality With 1 Bump | New Haven Independent

Abolitionist’s Dream Nears Reality With 1 Bump

Melissa Bailey Photo

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.

At 2:05 a.m. Thursday, the State Senate passed a repeal bill by a comfortable 20 – 16 margin. Holder-Winfield said he expects the House to vote on the bill, and pass it, next week. Malloy promises to sign it, making Connecticut the 17th state to outlaw capital punishment. (The bill covers future convicts; the 11 now on death row will remain there.)

Holder-Winfield was the only state representative present in the Senate chamber for the post-midnight deliberations and vote.

Obviously I was happy with the vote,” he said mid-day Thursday after returning to the Capitol on one night’s sleep. You don’t want to just marginally pass it. The fact that it was more than a one-vote margin was a good thing for us.”

That said, a bitter pill in Holder-Winfield’s view helped produce that margin: An amendment, introduced by pro-repeal Senate Democrats, that replaces death row with a new special confinement for people who commit what are now capital murders. Those include murders of police officers, of children under 16 and of multiple victims, as well murder for hire and murder committed in conjunction with sexual assault.

Instead of becoming death row” inmates, they’ll have special circumstances high-security status.” They’ll live in a separated unit, spending 22 out of every 24 hours inside their cell; guards will search their cell twice a week and move them to new cells every 90 days. They’ll have work assignments only in their section and be barred from contact” visits.

That amendment may have helped pull the larger repeal bill over the goal line. But it makes no sense, Holder-Winfield argued.

One reason: An argument in favor of the amendment was that these dangerous killers pose a threat to guards’ safety. Research shows the better you treat them, the less likely they are to be hostile and do something to those very guards,” Holder-Winfield argued. It seems to me we need to be very careful about that which we feel versus” research and real-life evidence.

In addition, Holder-Winfield said, it makes little philosophical sense for the amendment’s backers to raise the argument now. Most people who commit capital offenses don’t end up facing the death penalty. Fifty-seven inmates serving life sentences without parole are in maximum-security Connecticut prisons right now, in the general population. Legislators didn’t move to segregate them before. So, Holder-Winfield asked, why now?

That said, Holder-Winfield said he definitely plans to vote for the overall bill banishing capital punishment, even with the amendment. If I were designing this and I had my way it probably would not be what I would do,” he said of the amendment, but the larger goal remains saving lives by eliminating what he and other advocates consider an inherently cruel, discriminatory, ineffective practice.

Thomas MacMillan Photo

Looney: A quarter-century of perseverance pays off.

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.

Those 57 inmates are part of the reason behind the segregation amendment, Looney said. Because the decision to seek the death penalty was an arbitrary decision — a state prosecutor decided when to pursue it, and some were more eager than others to do so — some inmates went to death row, while others who committed serious crimes (the 57) went to regular prisons for life. If the amendment and the larger law pass, all people convicted of capital murder will serve the same kind of life sentence without parole.

Why now? Legislators toured MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield and concluded that those serving life sentences without parole should have it harder than the other inmates.

Some felt conditions at McDougall were not quite punitive enough,” Looney reported. As a result, the amendment helped the larger bill pass Thursday, he said. There were some people who wanted to make sure there was some distinction” in how different inmates are treated.

If passed, the amendment will not cover the 57 already convicted, only future convicts. One exception: If any of the 11 on death row end up avoiding the executioner on appeal, they will end up in the new system.

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