State Supreme Court will again hear death-penalty arguments
On the 17th anniversary of the murder of a 9-year-old Bridgeport boy and his mother on orders from drug kingpin Russell Peeler Jr., prosecutors will try to convince the state’s highest court that he must die.
States attorneys will offer new reasons to a seven-judge Supreme Court panel on why the repeal of the death penalty should not apply to Peeler — and the 10 others on Death Row.
While the high court narrowly ruled last summer that the inmates are exempt from the death penalty, state prosecutors will argue that the General Assembly did not mean the 2012 repeal of the death penalty to apply to those already sentenced to die.
“The judgment in this case must be reversed with respect to the imposition of a sentence of death and the case must be remanded with direction to impose a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release,” said a brief, filed by Assistant Public Defender Mark Rademacher and Lisa Steele, a private attorney, for Peeler, who will not attend the hearing, which will take place at 10 a.m. in the historic Supreme Court chamber on Capitol Avenue.
The makeup of the court has changed since last August, when Associate Justice Richard Palmer led a four-member majority in declaring that executing the Death Row inmates after the statewide repeal would amount to cruel and unusual punishment for the state’s most-dangerous murderers.
Associate Justice Flemming L. Norcott Jr., who sided with Palmer, has since retired and has been replaced by Associate Justice Richard A. Robinson who prosecutors hope is more-conservative on the death penalty.
Conversely, the new argument over the repeal could put Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers in a position to switch to Palmer’s side to protect the court’s precedent-setting decision last August.
Edward J. Gavin, a Bridgeport attorney who is a past president of the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and an opponent of the death penalty, said Wednesday the case has attracted the attention of the state’s entire legal community.
“The argument tomorrow is a roundabout attempt to influence the previous decision and prior rulings,” Gavin said in a phone interview. “People in the abolition world, we’re all nervous that the Supreme Court could reverse itself.”
Although Peeler’s brother Adrian Peeler killed B.J. Brown and his mother, Karen Clarke, on Jan. 7, 1999, Russell received the death penalty for ordering the killings. Adrian Peeler is serving a 25-year sentence.
The boy had been expected to testify against Russell Peeler in an unrelated shooting case.
Police found Clarke lying face up on the floor of her son's room, a telephone a few inches from an outstretched hand. The boy was dead in the hall, a bullet to the back of his head.
Since last August’s decision, the 11 men on Death Row have remained there, pending resentencing hearings in state Superior Court.
At the time of the legislative debates on the repeal in 2012, state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle stressed that it would not include those on Death Row at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers.
Earlier this week, state Sen. Michael A. McLachlan, R-Danbury, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said the General Assembly should revisit the issue to pass additional laws to make sure that Peeler and the other killers eventually face the executioner.
“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,” McLachlan said.
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/S...ts-6740995.php
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