POLL: What Should Happen To the Men on Connecticut’s Death Row?

Russell Peeler Jr. was sentenced to death in 2007 for ordering the killings of a woman and her 8-year-old son in Bridgeport in 1999. He has had the longest series of criminal trials in the state’s history.

In 2012 the state repealed the death penalty - but only for future crimes. And so Peeler Jr. and 10 other men still sit on death row, according to The New Haven Register.

Now, Connecticut Supreme Court must decide whether these men already condemned to die by the state’s judiciary system should still face that punishment. At the time of the repeal, people questioned what this would mean for the 11 men on death row.

The Supreme Court will hold a special summer session on June 30 to hear Peeler Jr.’s death penalty appeal, The New Haven Register reports. No upcoming court dates have been scheduled for any of the other men:

• Daniel Webb awaits execution for the 1989 kidnapping and murder of a Connecticut bank executive.

• Eduardo Santiago was convicted on capital felony and murder charges.
  Prosecutors say he carried out the killing in exchange for a snowmobile.

• Joshua Komisarjevky is on death row for the same 2007 triple murder as Steven Hayes.
  

• Robert Breton was convicted of the murders of his wife and son in Waterbury in 1987.
  

Source: The Hartford Courant