Governor Dannel Malloy’s signing of a Senate Bill 280, An
Act Revising the Penalty for Capital Felonies, has made national headlines.
With its passage, Connecticut has officially become the 17th state
to abolish the death penalty. Malloy cited the “unworkability” of Connecticut’s
death penalty as a major factor for signing the bill. In the last fifty two
years only two people have been put to death, Joseph “Mad Dog” Taborsky in 1960
and Michael Ross in 2005. The repeal of the penalty will not be retroactive,
and the eleven inmates currently on death row, including Cheshire murderers
Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, will not be affected.
