Paul Bass Photo
Willy Greene.
Melissa Bailey Photo
State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield.
Gary Holder-Winfield talked about the death penalty — and changed minds in Hartford. A challenger back home is talking about the death penalty, too — and hopes to change voters’ minds.
Both Holder-Winfield and Willy Greene, a former alderman challenging him in an Aug. 10 primary for the 94th General Assembly District seat, are up front about their views on the death penalty.
Holder-Winfield argued that it doesn’t deter crime, it’s cruel and unusual punishment, and it wastes taxpayer money. He also argues that comes down disproportionately hard on African-Americans; the 94th District includes the predominantly black Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods.
Holder-Winfield made those arguments at the state Capitol during this past two-year term, his first term in office. And he did something more experienced colleagues told him he could never do: He convinced both houses of the legislature to vote to repeal Connecticut’s death penalty. Along with two other accomplishments — introducing of a school reform bill that passed in modified form and galvanizing a statewide Facebook protest that got the state to resume processing unemployment claims — that crusade quickly made Holder-Winfield a name for himself in Hartford.
Click on the play arrow to watch a speech Holder-Winfield made during a death penalty debate on the state House floor.
Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed the legislature’s bill. Holder-Winfield tried, but failed, to talk her out of it. The legislature failed to override the veto.
If reelected, Holder-Winfield said, he’d like to reintroduce the death penalty abolition bill. Especially if the Democrats win the governor’s office for the first time since 1986.
Meanwhile, Willy Greene said he would support the death penalty if he wins the seat.
“I think there are some crimes that are so horrific that it warrants the death penalty,” he said.
He cited the Petit family slayings in Cheshire. Dr. William Petit, a survivor of the tragedy, lobbied legislators, then successfully lobbied Rell, to keep the death penalty intact.
“My heart goes out to the doctor,” Greene said. “Those men [accused of the murders] are deserving of the death penalty. We can find monies to take care of these people and keep them in jail for 30 years or a lifetime. But we can’t find money to put into the school system to give them an education and the supplies they need.”
Greene said he used to oppose the death penalty. Among the incidents that changed his mind was the killing of his brother two years ago.
It costs more money to prosecute death penalty cases, through appeals, than to house an inmate for life, Holder-Winfield responded. Greene said that with modern scientific identification techniques, the system should be able to streamline cases and save money.
Holder-Winfield also pointed to a 2008 study by Yale Law School Professor John Donohue III that showed that someone who kills a white person is more likely to face capital punishment in Connecticut than is someone who kills a black person.
All killings are horrific, Holder-Winfield argued. He disagreed with having different levels of punishment because some are more “heinous” than others.
“If somebody murders your wife nicely or murders her in a heinous way, you’ve lost your wife. She’s been murdered. Murder is heinous. What we do with the categories that we set up, the value of certain lives [is treated as] being more important,” he said. “If you’re a uniformed officer, you count; if you’re just Gary the activist walking down the street, you don’t count. If you’re in an area and you get murdered, but you don’t get kidnapped, you don’t count. If you get kidnapped, you count. They’re very much arbitrary. I used to wear a military uniform. I don’t think my life is any more valuable than anybody else’s. Never was. Never is.”
2 Generations, 1 Spirit
Holder-Winfield, who’s 36, wore that uniform in the U.S. Navy, when he worked as a load dispatcher on a nuclear-powered ship. He currently works as a staffer in the Southern Connecticut State University office of the American Association of University Professors. He moved to New Haven as an adult and lives in Newhallville.
Greene, who’s 61, is a retired public schools administrator and one-time head of the Dixwell Community “Q” House. He has been involved in Newhallville and city politics for decades.
While one is old school, one new school, the older and younger candidates share an independent streak, having won elections against the city Democratic machine. They agree on a range of issues from red-light cameras (for) to pushing the housing authority to put air conditioning in all senior housing complexes.
After walking the district for this campaign, Greene (pictured) came up with another topic that he’d like to push the housing authority on as a state representative. He noticed how Newhallville, which in his youth had one of the city’s highest homeownership rates, has dramatically shifted to a largely rental neighborhood. And some of those rentals are running as high as $1,200 a month, even $1,800 a month, for apartments in rundown houses on struggling stretches like Starr Street — because they’re rented under the federal Section 8 program administered by the local housing authority.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” Greene said. “Some of these houses, a good strong wind would blow them over. The state rep is going to have to sit down with the rest of the delegation and have a real heart to heart with the housing authority.”
He also wants to push the authority to post 24-hour guards at complexes where seniors live alongside younger people with drug problems or other disabilities, he said. “That’s the biggest complaint I’ve heard,” he said. “It’s a revolving door. People are coming in all night long.”
Looking ahead, Holder-Winfield said he’d like to reintroduce a bill that failed to advance in the last session to push police departments to use sequential line-ups when asking witnesses to identify criminals. Sequential line-ups force witnesses to compare a picture or person with their memory of the perpetrator, not with the other pictures or people that are presented in a simultaneous line-up. Sequential line-ups that are double-blind — where the administrator of the line-up doesn’t know which person is the suspect and can’t therefore nudge the witness to the “correct” conclusion — have proven to result in the fewest false identifications.
Eyewitness IDs are proving unreliable too often, Holder-Winfield said, citing this CBS 60 Minutes report. Locking up the wrong people doesn’t keep the streets safer.
Some people accuse him of just “helping criminals,” he said. “I want the system to work right. If we put people in jail, let’s put the right people in jail.”
Both candidates also promised to take on education if elected.
Greene spoke of pushing for more alternatives to college for students who would thrive in trades. “We have to look at designing curriculum for the chid that doesn’t want to go to college,” he said. “We have to get them ready for jobs that are out there rather than racking up student loans at Branford Hall or Stone Academy.”
Holder-Winfield said he wants to “explore” what he called a little-noticed contributor to the state’s highest-in-the-nation racial achievement gap: the poor job administrators and teachers often do in communicating with lower-income parents. He also promised to continue pushing state officials to live up to promises made in a new results-based accountability system.
Style note: Willy Greene previously spelled his name “Willie” Greene in political life. It’s not a typo.
And most importantly, Representive Holder-Winfield, innocent people get put to death, and for them, there is no appeal process.