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Thread: Richard Reynolds - Connecticut

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    Richard Reynolds - Connecticut



    Waterbury Police Officer Walter T. Williams





    Summary of Offense:

    Richard Reynolds, a Brooklyn, New York crack dealer, was sentenced to death in 1995 for the December 18, 1992 murder of Waterbury police officer Walter T. Williams.

    Officer Williams had stopped Reynolds, and when Williams went to search him, Reynolds pulled a gun from his pocket and shot the officer once in back of the head.

    Prosecutors proved that before firing, Reynolds bumped into Williams to see if he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

    https://murderpedia.org/male.R/r/reynolds-richard.htm

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    New lawyers fight to get convicted cop killer off death row

    Almost 16 years after being sentenced to die for gunning down a Waterbury police officer, Richard Reynolds is fighting to get off death row. His new lawyers say his public defenders were ineffective during his 1992 trial, and they claim to have evidence that Reynolds wasn't the triggerman.

    In a 188-page writ of habeas corpus filed in Rockville Superior Court, Reynolds's attorneys claim that a key witness for prosecutors, a drug addict who was on the street at 4 a.m., never saw the man who shot police officer Walter Williams III.

    The attorneys also claim that the man arrested with Reynolds on the night of the 1992 shooting, Anthony Crawford, should have been considered a suspect in the murder of Williams.

    Further, Reynolds's attorneys say that two jurors who helped decide whether Reynolds would live or die had a romantic relationship during the trial and later had children together. They go on to claim police also plied a key witness with cash and alcohol in the days before her testimony.

    http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2011/...cal/545512.txt

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Reynolds loses appeal in Connecticut death penalty case

    A Superior Court judge has rejected the latest appeal from a death-row inmate who was convicted of killing a police officer in 1992.

    Judge Carl Schuman issued a 90-page ruling last week rejecting the petition for a new trial filed by attorneys for Richard Reynolds

    Reynolds was convicted of shooting Officer Walter Williams III in the head after he and another man were stopped by Williams on a Waterbury street just before 4 a.m. on Dec. 18, 1992.

    Among other things, Reynolds had claimed that he was given ineffective counsel at trial, and that his lawyers should have questioned State's Attorney John Connelly's method of applying the death penalty to serious cases.

    Connelly tells the Republican-American newspaper that he is pleased with the ruling for the Williams family.

    http://www.myrecordjournal.com/ap_st...12aac99dd.html

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Judge declines to dismiss lawsuit claims over seized pornography by Connecticut death row inmate

    A federal judge has refused a request by Connecticut officials to dismiss two remaining claims in a lawsuit by a death row inmate who says prison officials improperly confiscated his pornographic magazines.

    U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill on Monday denied a motion to dismiss filed by the state attorney general's office in the lawsuit by Richard Reynolds. Underhill earlier dismissed several other claims by Reynolds.

    Reynolds was convicted of killing Waterbury police Officer Walter T. Williams in 1992.

    State officials wanted the only remaining allegations dismissed, including that prison officials violated Reynolds' constitutional rights in 2010 when they seized the magazines from his cell and required all death row inmates to be put in restraints while being escorted to and from their cells.

    State prisons banned pornographic materials in 2012.

    http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/sto...n-Pornography/
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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Supreme Court to hear Waterbury cop-killer's death-row appeal

    A man sentenced to death for killing a Waterbury police officer has an appeal hearing before the state Supreme Court.

    Richard Reynolds was convicted of shooting Officer Walter Williams in the head in December, 1992. Prosecutors say Williams had stopped Reynolds and another man on a Waterbury street while the pair were en route to a drug deal.

    The shooting happened 11 days before Williams' third son was born.

    Reynolds' lawyers plan to argue Wednesday that he did not get a fair trial, in part because his public defenders failed to question jurors about racial biases and failed to introduce evidence that Reynolds suffers from an anti-social personality disorder.

    They also say a drug conviction in New York should not have been considered an aggravating factor in considering his sentence.

    http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2015/...2822504359.txt
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Connecticut Supreme Court Rules Death Penalty Unconstitutional, Bars Execution Of Any Inmate

    By EDMUND H. MAHONY
    The Hartford Courant

    The Connecticut Supreme Court Thursday ruled 4-3 that the state's death penalty law, as it now stands, is unconstitutional and it barred the execution of the 11 state prison inmates now on death row.

    The law in question was enacted in 2012. It barred the "prospective" execution of those convicted of capital offenses after the date of enactment, but permitted the execution of those convicted before.

    "Upon careful consideration of the defendant's claims in light of the governing constitutional principles and Connecticut's unique historical and legal landscape, we are persuaded that, following its prospective abolition, this state's death penalty no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and no longer serves any legitimate penological purpose," Justice Richard Palmer wrote for the majority.

    ""For these reasons, execution of those offenders who committed capital felonies prior to April 25, 2012, would violate the state constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment."

    When state lawmakers abolished the death penalty in 2012 but made the law prospective, it prompted legal challenges by attorneys representing those condemned to die by execution.

    The Supreme Court agreed to take up the law's prospective issue when it granted a request by Eduardo Santiago, whose death sentence was overturned two months after the repeal took effect.

    The justices ordered a new penalty phase for Santiago, saying the trial judge failed to disclose "significant and relevant" mitigating evidence for jury consideration when jurors decided to send Santiago to death row for the December 2000 killing of Joseph Niwinski in West Hartford.

    During the death penalty debate, some legislators questioned whether a prospective repeal would stand up in court. The provision was added following the high-profile trials of Cheshire home invasion killers Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, both of whom are on death row.

    In his 2013 arguments before the Supreme Court, Assistant Public Defender Mark Rademacher told justices that even Connecticut's top prosecutor was skeptical of the prospective repeal.

    "The problems with the prospective repeal were aptly summed up by Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane when he told the legislature that prospective repeal creates two classes of people," Rademacher said at the time.

    "One will be subject to execution and the other will not, not because of the nature of the crime or the existence or absence of any aggravating or mitigating factor but because of the date on which the crime was committed," Rademacher said Kane told legislators in March 2012.

    "That is untenable as a matter of constitutional law or public policy. I just wouldn't plain feel right doing it," Rademacher recalled Kane saying.

    Rademacher said no jurisdiction in the history of the United States has executed an offender after renouncing capital punishment. In Connecticut, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles — not the governor — has the power to commute a death sentence to life in prison.

    Senior Assistant State's Attorney Harry Weller argued in support of the new law, saying that prospective repeal was the legislature's intent. He said it is constitutional and argued against the justices ruling on just part of the law. If the effective date of the law is found unconstitutional, the law must be struck in its entirety, he said.

    Weller said he saw two outcomes, "and neither of them get the defendant what he wants." The first outcome, he said, would be to affirm the constitutionality of the new law. The second outcome would be a ruling that the new law is unconstitutional.

    "But if you do that, the entire act is unconstitutional," Weller said. "This defendant remains subject to the death penalty and the death penalty remains in place."

    Weller said the state's highest court has always deferred to the legislature in regard to decisions about Connecticut's death penalty.

    The last person to be executed in Connecticut was serial killer Michael Ross, and it occurred in 2005 only after Ross waged a legal fight to end his appeals and to have the sentence imposed.

    http://touch.courant.com/#section/-1.../p2p-84199697/

  7. #7
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    State Supreme Court Upholds Abolishment Of Death Penalty, Including For Death-Row Inmates

    By Alaine Griffin and Matthew Kauffman
    The Hartford Courant

    The Connecticut Supreme Court has upheld its decision to abolish the state's death penalty, including for inmates on death row.

    The 5-2 ruling, released Thursday, upholds the justices 4-3 decision last August that the death penalty was unconstitutional for all – including 11 convicts on Connecticut's death row – following the legislature's abolition three years ago of capital punishment in Connecticut. Lawmakers made the law prospective, meaning it applied only to new cases and kept in place the death sentences already imposed on those facing execution before the bill was passed.

    Attorneys for those on death row challenged the law, saying it violated the condemned inmates' constitutional rights. The ruling last August came in the case of Eduardo Santiago, who had faced the death penalty for the December 2000 killing of Joseph Niwinski in West Hartford. Santiago has been resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release.

    In the August ruling, the justices in the majority wrote that executing an inmate "would violate the state constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment" and that the death penalty "no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency."

    Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers, who joined with Justice Carmen E. Espinosa and Justice Peter T. Zarella in the August dissents, voted this time with the majority, saying she felt bound to the doctrine of "stare decisis," a Latin term meaning "stand by things decided."

    "Just as my personal beliefs cannot drive my decision-making, I feel bound by the doctrine of stare decisis in this case for one simple reason—my respect for the rule of law," Rogers wrote. "To reverse an important constitutional issue within a period of less than one year solely because of a change in justices on the panel that is charged with deciding the issue, in my opinion, would raise legitimate concerns by the people we serve about the court's integrity and the rule of law in the state of Connecticut."

    Rogers said, "stability in the law and respect for the decisions of the court as an institution, rather than a collection of individuals, in and of themselves, are of critically important value, especially on an issue of such great public significance as the constitutionality of the death penalty."

    In separate dissents, Zarella and Espinosa rejected the assertion that respect for precedent mandated Thursday's ruling, saying that doctrine should never be used to enshrine a flawed decision. And they pointedly noted that Rogers herself had blasted the original Santiago decision as "a house of cards, falling under the slightest breath of scrutiny."

    They also criticized Justice Richard A. Robinson, who came on the court after the Santiago decision and voted with the majority, along with justices Richard N. Palmer, Dennis G. Eveleigh and Andrew J. McDonald. Like Rogers, Robinson cited the importance of respecting precedent.

    "I cannot fathom how Chief Justice Rogers and Justice Robinson believe they respect the rule of law by supporting a decision that is completely devoid of any legal basis or believe it is more important to spare this court of the purported embarrassment than to correct demonstrable constitutional error," Zarella wrote.

    In switching her position on Santiago, Rogers wrote that overruling the case so soon after it was decided could lead to public perception that Supreme Court rulings are based on the personal whims of its members and would undermine predictability in the law.

    "The short answer to those concerns," Espinosa wrote, "is that they are unjustified and irrelevant when the prior precedent at issue is clearly wrong." And that is particularly true, she wrote, when the "clearly wrong, recently decided case" upended prior decisions and violated the rule of precedent.

    Zarella also dismissed the assertion that overruling the Santiago decision would send the message that closely decided cases can be revisited whenever there is a change in the Supreme Court membership. "My response is concise and simple: So what," he wrote. "This has been, and will always be the case."

    Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, in a statement released Thursday afternoon, said the ruling "reaffirms what the court has already said: those currently serving on death row will serve the rest of their life in prison with no possibility of ever obtaining freedom."

    Malloy noted that Connecticut in the last half century has executed only two inmates, both of whom volunteered for death.

    "Opinions on this issue vary, and it's critical that we respect that diversity of perspectives," Malloy said. "These are deeply personal and moral issues that we as a society are facing and the court has once again ruled on today. Our focus today should not be on those currently sitting on death row, but with their victims and those surviving family members. My thoughts and prayers are with them on this difficult day."

    Chief State's Attorney Kevin T. Kane said his office respects the decision and would "move forward" to re-sentence the individuals currently on death row to a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release.

    "The Division of Criminal Justice and I extend our deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims of these crimes and to their families," Kane said in a statement. "I also wish to express my appreciation to the dedicated professionals in the Division of Criminal Justice who have devoted so much of themselves throughout this process."

    In October, the high court denied a request by the chief state's attorney to postpone the Santiago decision, a ruling that followed its denial of a request by prosecutors to re-argue Santiago.

    Prosecutors then filed briefs arguing for the Santiago decision to be overruled in the pending appeal of Russell Peeler, who was sentenced to death for ordering the 1999 killings in Bridgeport of 8-year-old Leroy "B.J." Brown Jr. and his mother, Karen Clarke. The justices heard arguments on those briefs in January.

    Prosecutors said in deciding the Santiago case, the court "did not confine its analysis" to the actual claim raised -- whether enacting the 2012 law invalidated the death sentences of those sentenced before the law went into effect. The court made its ruling, prosecutors said, "for reasons having little or nothing to do with" enactment of the 2012 law and "erred in its ruling on lines of analysis and authorities the parties had not discussed."

    Prosecutors also argued that the justices relied on "flawed historical analysis" to justify their "departure from well-established principles of law" and incorrectly determined that state residents prior to the 1818 constitution gave the high court the authority to act independently to invalidate a penalty.

    Public defenders for Peeler made several arguments against overruling the Santiago decision in court briefs, pointing foremost to the legal doctrine of "stare decisis" -- letting decided issues stand. Senior Assistant Public Defender Mark Rademacher told the justices that the state faced an "uphill battle" in getting the ruling reversed.

    "What the state is asking this court to do ... is simply breathtaking," Rademacher said at the January hearing. "It is asking this court to overrule a long line of cases that have affirmed the court's authority as a constitutional matter to protect the citizens of this state against cruel and unusual punishment."

    http://www.courant.com/news/connecti...526-story.html

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Court upholds murder conviction, throws out death penalty

    HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- The Connecticut Supreme Court has upheld the murder convictions of a man who killed a Waterbury police officer in 1992, but has overturned his death sentence because of the court's earlier abolishment of capital punishment.

    Justices ruled Friday on the appeal of Richard Reynolds and ordered a lower court to resentence Reynolds to life in prison without the possibility of release.

    Reynolds fatally shot Waterbury Officer Walter Williams.

    Reynolds' appeal said his public defenders failed to question jurors about racial biases and failed to introduce evidence that Reynolds suffers from an anti-social personality disorder.

    The Supreme Court abolished the death penalty last year. One death row inmate, Steven Hayes, has already been resentenced to life in prison. The 10 men remaining on death row also will be resentenced to life.

    http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/sto...06-17-12-08-27

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Judge rules life sentence too “cruel” for former death row inmates

    By Daniel Tepfer
    The Connecticut Post

    A federal court judge has ruled that Connecticut’s 11 former death row inmates can sue the state for causing them “cruel and unusual punishment” when they were resentenced to life terms.

    In the case of Richard Reynolds, sentenced to death in 1995 for killing a Waterbury police officer in 1992, U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill ruled that Reynolds confinement for the rest of his life violates his rights under the equal protection clause of the constitution.

    In 2015, the state Supreme Court declared Connecticut’s death penalty to be unconstitutional and Gov. Dannel Malloy signed a law ordering the state’s 11 death row inmates to be resentenced to life in prison without parole.

    In his 57-page decision, Underhill relied partly on the comments of state legislators who spoke in support of abolishing the death penalty to support his conclusion.

    “Life in prison is actually worse or even more punitive than being put to death,” said state Sen. Joe Crisco Jr. of Woodbridge at the time.

    “How one retains his sanity in an environment like that is incomprehensible,” said Sen. Edith Prague of Columbia.

    The judge ruled that the words from legislators, among others, showed “overwhelmingly a clear legislative intent to punish death row inmates through more restrictive conditions.”

    Underhill issued a permanent injunction enjoining the state from placing Reynolds in high security status which includes having him alone in his cell for more than 21 hours a day, from being segregated from other inmates and not being able to have visitors.

    The state has 30 days to submit a status report to the judge detailing how they have complied with his order.

    Bridgeport State’s Attorney John Smriga, whose office prosecuted former death row inmates Russell Peeler and Richard Roszkowski, said he is still reviewing the decision.

    https://www.ctpost.com/local/article...r-14389147.php
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  10. #10
    Wilso
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    March 11, 2021

    Court: Prison conditions for ex-death row inmate too harsh

    HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Connecticut prison officials are imposing detention conditions that are too harsh on a former death row inmate convicted of killing a police officer, ordering the state to relax those conditions.

    Richard Reynolds, convicted of killing Waterbury officer Walter Williams in 1992, is detained at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers under the highest Level 5 risk level. He says he is confined to his cell 21 to 22 hours a day and has no interaction with any inmates in the general population — conditions he claims are unconstitutional.

    Three judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City upheld a lower court judge and ruled Reynolds’ constitutional rights to equal protection are being violated, because two other former death row inmates are classified at a Level 4 risk level that allows them to live in the general population. They ordered that Reynolds be detained in similar Level 4 conditions.

    The judges also said the state law setting the Level 5 conditions was unconstitutional.

    Connecticut abolished its death penalty in 2015 and death row inmates were re-sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release.

    The appeals court panel also overruled some of the lower court decisions and sent the case back to the trial court to decide other claims by Reynolds, including whether his Level 5 confinement is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.

    In a statement, state Attorney General William Tong’s office said it was reviewing the appeals court ruling and will decide whether to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal.

    https://apnews.com/article/connectic...9bc4b0a40dc5ad

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