The arrested development of the death penalty in Connecticut

As detailed in this article from the Hartford Courant, the administration of the death penalty (or the lack thereof) has nearly everyone in the Nutmeg state frustrated.  Here is a snippet from the article:

Many on both sides of the debate over the death penalty have come to the same conclusion: It is unworkable.  Only one inmate — serial killer Michael Ross — has been executed in Connecticut in nearly 50 years, and that was only after he waged a legal fight to have his sentence imposed.   But they disagree whether the death penalty should be eliminated or repaired.

State Rep. Michael Lawlor, co-chairman of the legislature’s judiciary committee and an opponent of capital punishment, said that no convicted killer is going to be executed in Connecticut unless he wants to be, resulting in a legal process that’s cumbersome, costly and frustrating to victims’ families.

In March, the committee voted to abolish the death penalty, sending the proposal to the General Assembly. On Friday, legislators heard Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane’s plan to fix it.  Kane proposed streamlining the appeals process by requiring transcripts of proceedings to be prepared more quickly and limiting certain types of petitions in state courts. Doing so would hasten the process and spare victims’ families the pain and frustration of living in limbo for years, even decades, while death penalty cases wend their way through the courts, he said.

But critics, including Chief Public Defender Susan O. Storey, said that Kane’s prescription for a more workable death penalty would not substantially shorten the process. “If you really want death penalty reform, you can’t raise false hopes for victims’ families,” she said.  To Storey, a more just and moral solution is to do away with capital punishment and sentence those convicted of the most serious crimes to life in prison without the possibility of release.