In the final stretch of a drive to repeal the death penalty, New Haven added its voice of support — a voice that included politicians, a police chief, and a mother who lost her son to a gun.
The support came at a City Hall press conference Tuesday.
New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney was among the speakers. Looney, a longtime proponent of death-penalty abolition, led the successful effort last week to get the State Senate to vote 20 – 16 to repeal the death penalty. He said Tuesday the state House could vote as early as Thursday on the measure. If the repeal bill passes, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy promises to sign it. That would make Connecticut the 17th state to ban capital punishment, the fifth state in the last five years, according to Looney.
New Haven Mayor John DeStefano and Police Chief Dean Esserman were among the speakers, too. “Discipline that I have seen work is swift and certain. The death penalty is neither,” Esserman said.
Perhaps the most dramatic support came from Vicky Coward. (Click on the play arrow to watch excerpts.) A man shot Coward’s 18-year-old son Tyler to death by the Edgewood Park sundial in 2007, the same year two men murdered three members of the Petit family in Cheshire. Since then Vicky Coward met with and forgave the killer. She and fellow survivor William Petit have lobbied the legislature on capital punishment: she to abolish it, he to preserve it. Until this year, reporters and legislators listened at length to Petit and largely ignored Coward and her network of fellow pro-repeal survivors. This year is shaping up differently.
“Like so many victims’ families,” Coward said, “my family could care less about the death penalty, because we have more pressing needs: Counseling for my daughters. Help replacing the income that Tyler used to provide. And a support system that helps a mother like me get out of bed every day and continue to live in a world without her child.”
I'm glad to see a small amount of media coverage finally given to someone other than Dr. Petit. Although I understand Dr. Petit has his own very strong opinions on the matter, I do not think it does the debate any good to use him as the face of all Victims' Families, when there are courageous women like Ms. Coward out there, who are equally entitled to their principled beliefs.