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Thread: Daniel Webb - Connecticut

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    Daniel Webb - Connecticut


    Diane Gellenbeck




    Facts of the Crime:

    Webb was convicted of kidnapping and murder for the 1989 slaying in Hartford of Diane Gellenbeck, a 37-year-old Connecticut National Bank vice president.

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    March 30, 2010

    HARTFORD - A death-row inmate attacked a guard Monday inside Connecticut's highest-security prison, correction officials said.

    The Northern Correctional Institution was locked down after the inmate, identified by a state lawmaker as Daniel Webb, punched a captain in the head just before 10:30 a.m., said Brian Garnett, a department spokesman.

    Garnett refused to identify the inmate, but state Rep. Karen Jarmoc, D- Enfield, who served as chairwoman of a task force on safety issues in the prisons, said she was notified that it was Webb, 47, who is awaiting execution for the 1989 murder of bank executive Diane Gellenbeck in Hartford.

    Garnett declined to give details of the attack, but a department official with direct knowledge of the incident said that Webb was being escorted from the prison library to his cell when he "sucker-punched" the captain at least twice in the face.

    Webb was not in handcuffs or shackles at the time, and death-row prisoners are not required to be restrained during routine escorts, the official said.

    Webb had threatened the captain before and had been upset over what he and other death-row inmates perceive as an unfair lack of privileges on death row, the official said.

    Garnett said four other staff members were injured while subduing Webb. All five staff members were taken to outside medical facilities for evaluation. None of the injuries appeared to be serious, officials said.

    http://www.courant.com/news/connecti...,3564696.story

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    March 31, 2010

    Prison Captain Asked To Shackle Death-Row Inmate Before Being Assaulted, But Request Was Denied, Legislator Says

    A state legislator Wednesday called for a legislative hearing to investigate why a prison captain was denied a request to shackle a death row inmate Daniel Webb, before Webb allegedly attacked him while being moved to a cell Monday at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers.

    State Rep. Karen Jarmoc, D-Enfield, said that the legislative judiciary committee's co-chairman, Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, D-East Haven, has agreed next week to discuss holding such a hearing.

    Jarmoc also said a prison psychologist had told correction officials in an email about his concern regarding an "aggressive focus on the captain" exhibited by Webb, 47, who allegedly assaulted the captain Monday and four others who subdued him.

    "This is disturbing and completely unacceptable," Jarmoc said in a press release. She has served in the past as chairwoman of a task force on safety issues in the state's prisons.

    The state Department of Correction had no immediate response.

    Jarmoc said she would want any judiciary committee hearing to focus on Monday's attack and how, in general, "death row inmates are being managed."

    State Department of Correction officials have confirmed some details of the attack, but have not identified Webb. He is awaiting execution for the murder of bank executive Diane Gellenbeck in Hartford in 1989. A prison spokesman said an inmate "sucker-punched" the captain in the face. Webb had threatened the captain before, and had been upset over what he and other inmates believe is an unfair lack of privileges on death row, an official said, according to Jarmoc's statement.

    Jarmoc's press aide, Dan Uhlinger, spoke to Kevin Brace, one of four correction officers who responded in the attack. Uhlinger reported in Jarmoc's release that Brace suffered muscle injuries. He is on sick leave and receiving treatment.

    "Thank God the captain wasn't killed," Brace was quoted as saying. "Webb is on death row. He's got nothing to lose. He's at least than 6-foot-5 and weighs more than 300 pounds. I mean it took more than five of us to restrain him."

    Brace was quoted in the release as saying that the captain, who does not want to be identified out of fear for his family, told him that he wanted to shackle the inmate but was not allowed by prison officials.

    "I think sometimes prison officials are afraid of lawsuits or making the inmates angry," Brace said.

    Jarmoc's release also quoted Catherine Osten, president of the correction union, as saying that minimum staffing requirements of frontline supervisors have been lacking. The state Department of Correction has been "shorting" the lieutenant complement by 30 to 60 percent in several facilities, she said.

    "This serious incident could have been prevented if the standard in regard to restraining death row inmates has been supported by DOC administrators," Osten said.

    Osten said the captain told her that Webb had threatened him before and that the request to handcuff Webb from behind was denied by administrators, according to Jarmoc's release.

    http://blogs.courant.com/capitol_wat...to-shackl.html

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    AP Interview: Death row inmate says new law unfair

    Daniel Webb is awaiting execution for the 1989 kidnapping and murder of a Connecticut bank executive, but he believes he is also paying a price for another, unrelated crime that has heavily influenced the state's debate on capital punishment.

    Webb told The Associated Press in a death row interview that he thinks there would be no capital punishment in the state if not for the public's desire to execute the men responsible for 2007 home-invasion slayings of a mother and her two daughters in suburban Cheshire. The only survivor of that crime, Dr. William Petit, lobbied to keep the death penalty for the men who killed his family, Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky.

    "Dr. Petit is angry with them and with his anger he wants to kill all of us," said Webb, who spoke by telephone from behind a glass window. "Now you are trying to increase my suffering and take away the little that I had because you want to make Komisarjevsky suffer. That's not right."

    Webb was sentenced to die for the slaying in Hartford of Diane Gellenbeck, a 37-year-old Connecticut National Bank vice president, who was taken from a downtown parking garage and shot to death near a local golf course as she ran from an attempted sexual assault.

    The state legislature in April abolished capital punishment, but only for future crimes. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and key state lawmakers had insisted on that as a condition of their support for repeal in a long-running debate that focused on the Petit case.

    "If you are going to abolish the death penalty, abolish the death penalty," said Webb. "I don't think you can have a law that has double standards. Abolish means abolish, doesn't it?"

    A spokesman for Malloy declined to comment on Webb's assertion.

    William Petit's sister, Hanna Petit Chapman, said she does not care what Webb thinks. She compared him to her relatives' killers for laying blame with others.

    "His condemnation is a direct result of his choices and actions. His finger pointing and blaming others sounds very familiar to what we heard from Komisarjevsky and Hayes. He could have let her go, yet, chose to shoot her five times when she escaped. I am not sure how that translates to being my family's fault," she said.

    The balding, bearded Webb also complained during the hour-long interview Friday that the conditions of his confinement are unbearable and amount to torture.

    Death-row inmates at Northern Correctional Institution are kept isolated in 8-by-12 foot cells with almost no human contact, even with other death-row inmates. They are given an hour of recreation a day, alone in cell-sized cages in the prison yard.

    Webb, 49, says he has no friends on death row. He can only communicate by shouting through his steel door or into an air vent, something he says makes conversations with other inmates almost impossible.

    Correction Department spokesman Brian Garnett described the conditions as humane and constitutional.

    The mother of Webb's victim is not sympathetic. Dorothy Gellenbeck, 86, said Webb deserves to live in the harshest conditions and to die for killing her daughter.

    "I have had a lot of years to miss my girl," Gellenbeck said from her home in Pennington, N.J. "I don't care what the new Connecticut law is. He is guilty of murder and at the time of the murder the death penalty was in effect. And why should he live, when he killed someone?"

    Connecticut's only execution since 1960 came in 2005, after serial killer Michael Ross voluntarily gave up his appeals.

    "I can now see what can push a man to that point," said Webb. "I'd rather be dead than live like this."

    Webb said he attempted to hang himself in January, and later wrote a letter to court officials asking to give up his appeals and be executed. He has since rescinded that decision, saying lawyers and mental health professionals convinced him to wait and see how legal challenges to the death penalty are received.

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/17...#ixzz20rn7RGK6
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    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Told To Keep Quiet About Death Row Melee, Officer Claims Vindication

    A state correctional officer, who got in trouble in 2010 for talking publicly about being injured during a melee with death-row inmate Daniel Webb, has won $16,000 in legal fees and had a disciplinary memo removed from his personnel file under an agreement negotiated with the Department of Correction.

    Under the agreement, Kevin Brace, 42, a 19-year correctional officer who works at the maximum-security Northern Correctional Institution in Somers, withdrew a complaint he had filed in 2010 with the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities against the correction department and several superiors. The state admitted no fault or liability in the settlement that was signed last month.

    Brace said his complaint to the human rights agency had nothing to do with money – but only his effort to avoid retaliation for exercising his freedom of speech. In April 2010, Brace was chairman of a special health and safety subcommittee for prison staff, and after a meeting of that panel he talked to reporters about being one of several officers who tried to subdue Webb after he allegedly attacked a prison captain.

    After he started getting "intimidation" memos saying he'd violated department policies, the work of that safety subcommittee came to a standstill and never really resumed, Brace said in an interview. "They blew it out of proportion, and in a way it worked because we haven't had a meeting since that whole thing happened," he said.

    "I'm just glad it's over," Brace said. "It was three years of trying to get my name cleared. ..This, to me, wasn't about making money… It was more about standing up for free speech. It was a witch hunt from the beginning. … I spoke the truth about what happened. All I ever wanted was attorney fees and discipline removed from my file."

    "The DOC's longstanding practice of silencing employees who speak out about what happens behind the walls is why I decided to fight back," he said.

    Webb is one of 11 death row inmates whose executions have been delayed by appeals and other litigation. He was convicted in 1989 of the murder of bank executive Diane Gellenbeck in Hartford. He abducted her from a parking garage about 12:15 p.m. on Aug. 24, 1989, and, driving a car he'd borrowed from his girlfriend, took Gellenbeck to Keney Park, where he tried to sexually assault her. She broke free and ran screaming from the vehicle, but Webb shot her several times. He then got out of the car and fired several more shots, including one in her face.

    Brace talked to reporters about a week after the 2010 incident at Northern involving Webb, who the correction department had said "sucker-punched" an officer. Brace, his right arm in a sling, said that Webb is "at least 6-foot-5 and weighs more than 300 pounds. I mean it took more than five of us to restrain him." Brace is 6 feet 4.

    He described the prison incident as "chaos, and [a] melee and a big pile of staff trying to subdue and restrain inmate Webb. I just kind of jumped in the pile, and we were trying get him restrained. . . . He was punching, he was kicking, thrashing around. After [he] was restrained, I was escorting him to another cell [with another guard] . . . and he started going 'dead weight.' And he kept dropping his weight, and dropping his weight, and finally he dropped his weight and I lost my balance and got thrown into a metal door frame. That's how I injured my shoulder."

    In the months after he was quoted in the newspaper, he began receiving memos – one that alleged he'd made a "false statement to the media." Another said he could be "subject to possible discipline up to and including suspension."

    Brace's attorney, Leon Rosenblatt of West Hartford, was critical in an interview Friday of the lawyers from the state attorney general's office who represented the Department of Correction.

    "In my view the state, in general, is among the worst defendants lawyers to have to face. The attorneys who represent the Department of Correction are the worst of the worst," said Rosenblatt, who focuses on employment and labor.

    "When I bring a case…oftentimes we have reasonable people on the other side – and if we're doing our jobs right," the case can be settled without it turning into "World War III," Rosenblatt said. In this case, "it was flagrant that [Brace] was punished because he talked to the press," so it should have been a simple matter to settle it, he said. "But they litigated it as if it were a capital felony case. They just tried to wear him down."

    Rosenblatt also said an assistant attorney general, whom he wouldn't name, had "double-crossed" Brace and him by including a clause in a draft of the stipulated agreement that she had agreed not to include. The clause would have released all state employees from any legal liability involving Brace – both as individuals as well as state employees or officials, he said. Rosenblatt said it was agreed that it would be removed because it was too broad.

    But when the agreement was presented, the clause was still in there, Rosenblatt said – adding that the assistant attorney general wouldn't agree to remove it until he threatened not to settle the case and to push it to a full, formal hearing. Only then was the clause modified into narrower language, he said

    Associate Attorney General Perry Zinn-Rowthorn gave the following statement in reaction: "Consistent with our obligations to defend state agencies, we represented DOC in this matter. Contrary to the suggestion that this office was overly aggressive in its defense, we and Attorney Rosenblatt negotiated a voluntary settlement that avoided the necessity or expense of a hearing and the possibility of subsequent appeals.

    "While Attorney Rosenblatt may now regret the settlement he reached on behalf of his client, a CHRO referee supervised settlement discussions and endorsed the final resolution. As to Attorney Rosenblatt's comments about the release, we will not comment on individual points of settlement negotiation except to note our disagreement with his version of events, and to point out that it is common and appropriate for the state – indeed for all defense counsel – to seek releases that resolve disputes to the fullest extent possible. It is our responsibility to vigorously but fairly defend the state's interests in litigation, and we believe we did so in this instance."

    http://www.courant.com/news/politics...1062195.column

    Connecticut eliminated the death penalty for new defendants in April 2012. The fate of convicts already on death row is being decided by the Connecticut Supreme Court.

    http://www.theday.com/article/20130424/NWS12/304249934

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    Death Row Inmate Cites Abolishment of Death Penalty in Appeal

    A convicted murder on death row is arguing that his sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment since the state has abolished the death penalty.

    The appeal, which could affect all inmates on death row, was scheduled to be heard Tuesday, Oct. 22, by the Connecticut Supreme Court, according to an article by the Associated Press that was published on WTNH's website.

    The appeal has been brought forth by Daniel Webb. He was convicted of the 1989 kidnapping and murder of Diane Gellenbeck.

    The AP article reports that Webb's lawyers claim his constitutional right to equal protection is being violated by the state law that abolished the death penalty, because it only abolished it for those not already convicted. The death penalty was overturned in 2012, just as a poll showed the majority of Connecticut residents support it.

    As of May of this year, there were 11 adult male inmates awaiting execution on death row at the Northern Correctional Institution in Somers, according to an FAQ on the state Department of Corrections' website.

    In an interview with the AP in July of 2012, Webb said: "I don't think you can have a law that has double standards. Abolish means abolish, doesn't it?"

    http://southbury.patch.com/groups/po...alty-in-appeal
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  7. #7
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    I lived and worked in the Hartford, Connecticut area when Webb murdered Diane Gellenbeck, a successful, young professional. It broke my heart that a sleazeball like Webb could end the life of someone so accomplished and with so much to look forward to. This case has stuck in my mind ever since. Webb had gotten out on bail for a rape charge the day before he kidnapped and raped Ms Gellenbeck. When he stopped the car she jumped out and ran, but he shot her down. Then he got out of the car and shot her more times as she tried to crawl away, including once in the face. No, I don't think people charged with violent crimes deserve bail. Too bad if the jail is crowded, sleep in shifts. Then he killed again? If he'd gotten the DP for the Gellenbeck murder the CO most likely would be still alive. If a sensible judge had worked his arraignment for the first rape, they'd both be alive. The system failed a lot of good people that month. He was sentenced to die in 1991. It's a miscarriage of justice that this animal has not been put down.

    Connecticut's last execution was a serial killer, in 2005. It was the first (and last AFAIK) execution anywhere in New England (Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut) since 1960. They won't execute anyone ever again. Webb only wants to get off death row and back in general population where he can do more mayhem.

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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/

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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

  10. #10
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    5th Connecticut Death Row Inmate Resentenced To Life Without Release

    Daniel Webb, a Hartford man who earned a spot on death row with the kidnapping, attempted rape and murder of a Hartford bank vice president in 1989, received a new sentence Friday: life without the possibility of release.

    Webb, 54, appeared in Superior Court in Hartford before Judge Julia D. Dewey for resentencing required by the state Supreme Court decision abolishing the death penalty in Connecticut.

    Several of Webb's relatives were seated in the courtroom and he nodded and smiled at them as two correction officers escorted him to the defense table, where he joined his lawyers, Michael Sheehan and Richard Reeve.

    http://www.courant.com/news/connecti...909-story.html
    "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

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