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April 11th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Advocates for abolishing the state’s death penalty were optimistic the legislation will receive final legislative approval on Wednesday and move Connecticut closer to becoming the 17th state to end capital punishment.
Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, D-New Haven, said he believes there are enough votes in the House of Representatives to pass the bill, which passed the Senate last week after nearly 11 hours of debate. The House was expected to take up the bill in the afternoon and debate could also last hours. The chamber’s minority Republicans were expected to propose several amendments.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has said he will sign the bill, which affects future cases and not the 11 men currently on Connecticut’s death row. Critics, however, predict the bill’s passage would be used by those men as grounds for new appeals.
Hours before the debate was to begin, repeal proponents urged the House members to follow the lead of the Senate. Dawn Mancarella of Milford, whose mother Joyce Masury was murdered in 1996, said she represents more than 180 individuals who have lost loved ones to murder and are backing repeal. She said they don’t believe the death penalty helps them.
“Some of us have seen the loss of their loved ones all but ignored while capital cases get months, or even years, of attention,” she said during a morning news conference. “Some of us have endured capital cases and are horrified that the death penalty ensnares them in a never-ending wait for execution.”
Masury said not all family members of murder victims believe the death penalty brings closure or justice.
“These are elusive terms that cannot compete with the violent, horrific loss of a murdered loved one,” she said. “Nor will they bring that loved one back to us.”
Connecticut has carried out only one execution in 51 years, when serial killer Michael Ross was administered a lethal injection in 2005 after he gave up his appeal rights.
Prior to last week’s Senate vote, several family members of murder victims, including Dr. William Petit Jr., whose wife and two daughters were murdered in a 2007 Cheshire home invasion, tried to persuade lawmakers to keep the death penalty in place. Petit, who was instrumental in persuading senators last year to oppose repeal efforts, said legislators are being “led astray” if contends repeal would affect those on death row, including the two men convicted of killing his family members.
The bill would abolish the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release. The Senate amended the bill last week to require that individuals convicted under the new legislation would be subject to prison conditions similar to those now experienced by death row inmates.
Many officials insisted on the amendment as a condition of their support.
In the past five years, four states have abolished the death penalty — New Mexico, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. Repeal proposals are also pending in several other states including Kansas and Kentucky, while advocates in California have gathered enough signatures for an initiative that could go before the voters in November.
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