BRIDGEPORT — 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...
from News https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Judge-rules-life-sentence-too-cruel-for-14389147.php
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