By Alaine Griffin
The Hartford Courant
HARTFORD — The 11 men spared execution after Thursday’s decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court to end capital punishment could move off death row by the end of the month, one of a series of issues ranging from inmate logistics to appeals and staffing that state officials will have to grapple with since the landmark ruling.
Michael Courtney, head of the state’s Capital Defense Unit, said the inmates were told on Thursday by state Department of Correction officials that that they could be transferred out of the unit at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers — the state’s highest security prison — by late August.
Death-row inmates are subject to solitary confinement and more restrictions than inmates sentenced to life without parole. They are housed in single cells and receive fewer recreation hours and less access to prison programs and visitors.
“Now they should be treated like any other inmates,” Courtney said. “They should go into the general population.”
Karen Martucci, a Department of Correction spokesperson, said Friday in an email that she could not confirm a specific date “when there will be a change in status for any of the eleven death row offenders.”
When asked about plans for the death-row unit and its execution chamber, Martucci pointed to a statement issued Thursday that said the department was consulting lawyers about decisions it needs to make in the wake of the ruling. She said Correction Commissioner Scott Semple was out of the state Friday.
In a 4-3 decision released Thursday, the state Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in Connecticut, saying in the majority opinion that the punishment “no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency” and no longer serves any correctional objective.
Connecticut lawmakers abolished capital punishment in April 2012 but made the law prospective, effectively applying it only to new cases and keeping in place the death sentences already imposed before the bill was passed. The provision was added after the high-profile trials of Cheshire home invasion killers Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky.
Attorneys representing those on death row challenged the 2012 law, saying it violated the condemned inmates’ constitutional rights.
The state Supreme Court agreed to take up the prospective issue in the case of Eduardo Santiago, whose death sentence was overturned in June 2012. The case was argued before the state’s highest court in April 2013.
State prosecutors now have until Aug. 25, 10 days from the official release date of the ruling, to move for reargument in the case. That deadline could be extended. It was unclear late Friday whether the state would ask for reconsideration. Both Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Harry Weller, who handled the Santiago case, and Mark A. Dupuis, communications officer for the state Division of Criminal Justice, were both out of the office Friday, according to replies from emails.
It was also unclear Friday whether the decision, grounded in the state constitution, is largely immune from review at the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the meantime, attorneys for the former death-row inmates are expected to file resentencing motions in Superior Court. Each case could be handled separately or an administrative judge could consolidate them. The inmates will be sentenced to life in prison without parole. Although appeals stemming from the penalty phases of these cases appear to be on hold, the Capital Defense Unit of the office of the chief public defender will continue its work on pending direct appeals by about a half-dozen of the inmates — including Hayes and Komisarjevsky — contesting the fairness of the guilt phase of their trial.
Thursday’s decision is not expected to have a major impact on the Capital Defense Unit’s staff, officials said. After the 2012 repeal, budget cuts forced the unit to let go of its mitigation specialists and reduce its staff to one trial lawyer, an investigator and about half-dozen appellate lawyers.
In addition to the appeals, the staff — even after the repeal — had to handle cases at the trial court level, including the defense of triple murderer Richard Roszkowski. An error in jury instructions prompted a Superior Court judge to order a new penalty phase for Roszkowski in March 2014.
“It was very difficult because we didn’t have the staffing and we didn’t know what was going to happen,” Chief Public Defender Susan Storey said. “We were waiting for so long for Santiago to come out. It’s been a very confusing time not just for us, but also for our clients on death row.”
Courtney said the criminal defense community did not expect the justices to outlaw the death penalty. The attorneys passed on this skepticism to their clients, which made Thursday’s ruling more stunning to them all. Courtney said he spoke Thursday with about half of the inmates and they were “happy.”
“And they were surprised because we tried to prepare them for a ruling that would not go in their favor,” Courtney said.
Storey said she expects that some of the inmates — including killers whose time there dates to the 1980s — will have a rough time adjusting from the isolation of death row to the general prison population. Since 1960, the state has put only one murderer to death. Serial killer Michael Ross died by lethal injection in 2005 after his own successful legal fight to end his appeals.
“Some of the men have been living with the specter of death for a very long time and I’m sure that’s been extremely stressful and debilitating. I’m not sure right now how that’s going to be handled,” Storey said.
She said she expects a lot of discussions between both sides in coming weeks and months.
“It’s a very emotional issue on both sides so it’s hard to say too much right now. I know how our people feel but I’m sure there are a lot of victims’ families out there who are having a lot of painful moments now.”