Connecticut lawmakers voted to repeal the death penalty in 2012 which eliminated it for all future sentences. At the time, the General Assembly was under the assumption that previous death penalty sentences would stand.
But in 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional and that capital punishment, “has become incompatible with contemporary standards of decency in Connecticut and, therefore, now violates the state constitutional prohibition against excessive and disproportionate punishments,” according to the majority opinion.
Associate Justice Andrew McDonald agreed with that opinion and even wrote a lengthy consent himself.
That ruling has become one of the key issues that opponents are jumping on during his nomination hearing for chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court.
Gov. Dannel Malloy nominated McDonald, a former state senator from Stamford who also played key legal advisory roles for the governor during his time as both mayor of Stamford and governor, to replace Chase Rogers as the top justice on the state’s highest court.
Rep. Arthur O’Neill provided a detailed questioning of McDonald in relation to his views and subsequent decision on the death penalty. He even read Senate transcripts of McDonald discussing how he wanted to abolish the death penalty in Connecticut as a member of the State Senate.
“Part of this, ultimately, is the public’s confidence in the judiciary and the neutrality and the objectivity and the fact and what’s basis and what’s presented in a courtroom basis for making decisions and not the basis that someone is carrying with them a position that they held before they ever got on the bench,” O’Neill said during the hearing at the Legislative Office Building.
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McDonald countered by saying the case regarding the death penalty was not a question about its constitutionality as a punishment, but on whether the law applied to existing sentences. He added that just because he had an opinion on a topic, that did not preclude him from being an impartial jurist.
“You do not, as a judge, have the opportunity to get out of a case because it would be convenient or expedient to do so,” McDonald said. “Would it have been easier to disqualify myself for the purposes of this discussion that I am having with you? Of course it would be, but that’s not my responsibility as a judge.”
McDonald has served on the Connecticut Supreme Court since 2013 and his term does not come up for reconfirmation until 2021, meaning regardless of the outcome of this nomination, he will remain on the state’s highest court.
His nomination must be confirmed by the General Assembly, but it is unclear whether the Connecticut House or Senate will consider his nomination first.
