News and Updates

The legislation would not affect sentences of the 11 inmates currently on Connecticut’s death row

Credit: Jessica Hill/AP

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy speaks after signing a two-year $40.1 billion budget bill into law at the Capitol in Hartford, Conn., Wednesday, May 4, 2011.

HARTFORD, Conn. - A push to abolish Connecticut's death penalty is one step closer to becoming a reality after clearing a key legislative hurdle in the state Senate early Thursday morning.

State senators voted 20-16 in favor of a death penalty repeal bill after about 11 hours of impassioned floor debate.

State senators in Connecticut are slated to vote Wednesday on whether to become the fourth state in recent years to repeal the death penalty.

Senate Democrats say they have enough votes to approve the bill and send it to the state's House of Representatives, where it would widely be expected to pass. Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, has said that if presented to him, he would sign the bill into law.

A Virginia death row inmate is getting some high-powered support in his bid for freedom.

Thirty-four former judges and prosecutors have filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging a federal appeals court to affirm the reversal of Justin Michael Wolfe's murder-for-hire conviction. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the case on May 17.

Wolfe, now 31, was sentenced to death for the 2001 slaying of his marijuana supplier, Daniel Petrole, in Prince William County. U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson threw out Wolfe's conviction last July, saying the prosecution suppressed evidence and knowingly used false testimony from its star witness, shooter Owen Barber.

The Virginia attorney general's office is appealing Jackson's ruling.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Though the scheduled Thursday execution of Thomas Douglas Arthur had been halted, the legal battle over the man convicted of a 1982 murder-for-hire is far from over.