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According to McLachlan (R-Danbury, Bethel, New Fairfield and Sherman), the state Supreme Court is preparing to review its landmark 4-3 decision declaring the death penalty unconstitutional.
When Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the state Legislature abolished the death penalty, they intended it to cover future murder cases only – leaving nearly a dozen men, still facing execution, McLachlan said.
At a hearing Thursday, Jan. 7, justices are scheduled to hear arguments in the case of Russell Peeler Jr., who is serving a life sentence for ordering the execution-style killing in 1999 of Leroy "B.J." Brown, 8, and his mother, Karen Clarke, in Bridgeport.
“The true legislative intent in Connecticut’s 2012 law was to repeal the death penalty prospectively only,” said McLachlan, who serves on the Judiciary Committee. “The Legislature and the governor had no intention of sparing the lives of Connecticut’s most heinous and depraved murderers who were already on Death Row.”
The intent, as McLachlan said he sees it, was to ensure that those who were sentenced to death under the Connecticut death penalty law for crimes committed prior to 2012 “would be put to death in accordance with the law in existence at the time they committed their crimes.”
“We’ve got to clarify that in Connecticut law,” the senator concluded.
A divided Supreme Court ruled in August in the appeal of another death row inmate that the 2012 abolishment must be applied to those who remained on Death Row because the death penalty violated the state constitution.
Peeler's life sentence was upheld in November by the state Appellate Court.
Leroy was expected to be the key witness against Peeler in the fatal shooting of Clarke's boyfriend.
The two were killed by Peeler's brother, Adrian, who is serving 25 years in prison.
Peeler was originally sentenced to death, but when the state overturned the death penalty, his sentence became life without the possibility of release.
Prosecutors in Peeler’s case are expected to argue Thursday that the 2012 law – allowing the death penalty for future murders only – does not violate the state constitution.
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