Rather than gloat, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy offered a “solemn” reaction Thursday to one last victory in his efforts to prevent Connecticut from executing prisoners.
The governor offered that reaction during an unrelated stop to New Haven to announce the long-delayed reopening of the State Street Bridge.
He was asked at the event about Thursday’s decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling the state’s death penalty unconstitutional. Click on the video to watch his response.
Malloy, a longtime opponent of the death penalty, had already signed a law that outlawed the death penalty in Connecticut — moving forward. He had risked getting elected to his first term by embracing that position at a time when state voters—in the midst of the Cheshire Petit family murder trial — told pollsters they supported the death penalty. The law Malloy signed kept in place the death penalty for the 11 inmates remaining on death row.
Thursday’s Supreme Court decision will now keep those inmates alive, too. Read more about the decision here.
“This is a solemn day in Connecticut,” Malloy said at the State Street event. “We have to keep in our minds how difficult this is for victims and victims’ families. There were a number of victims’ families that spoke on behalf of total repeal. They didn’t get in the legislature what they were looking for in the legislature.We a actually did it on a prospective basis. On there were families that didn’t want to see any change at all.”
He noted that in the past 54 years, the only two Connecticut inmates to be executed had volunteered to be executed, the last being Michael Ross in 2005.
Given that, some of the justices clearly concluded that the remaining death penalty in Connecticut constitutes “cruel and unusual as applied to those that were already sentenced,” Malloy observed. While other justices called it “cruel and unusual,” period.
Justice Notes: