McDonald, the youngest Justice on the court, was the lame-duck Governor's Chief Legal Counsel before he was appointed to the Court by Malloy in 2013. McDonald had been with the Governor since Malloy’s
salad days as Mayor of Stamford. Malloy’s Chief Counsels and political staff
have been particularly favored during his administration. Luke Bronin,
presently Mayor of Hartford, a city teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and in
need of frequent cash transfusions from the state, also had served as Chief
Counsel to Malloy.
In 2011, Malloy appointed Mike Lawlor as Undersecretary for
Criminal Justice, a new position, and Lawlor has taken it upon himself to
reform Connecticut’s criminal justice system. He instituted a “get out of jail
early” program that for a time was releasing into Connecticut’s social
bloodstream violent criminals such as rapists and arsonists. Lawlor now proudly boasts he is sending “non-violent” criminals to college.
As co-chairs of the General Assembly’s Judiciary committee, McDonald
and Lawlor strove mightily to repeal Connecticut’s death penalty law, a
difficult chore at the time because the repeal effort coincided with a multiple murder in Cheshire by two paroled prisoners, Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky. The pair, who had
murdered the wife and two daughters of present State Representative Dr. William
Petit, were sentenced to death, and lingered for years on Connecticut’s Death
Row, until the death penalty was found unconstitutional by Connecticut’s
Supreme Court in 2015. By that time, McDonald was a sitting State Supreme Court
Associate Justice.
The abolition effort had in it more twists and turns than a
slinky. In 2009, then Governor Jodi Rell
vetoed a death penalty abolition bill, citing the horrific Cheshire murders as
a principal reason. In 2012, the General Assembly voted to repeal the death
penalty prospectively, leaving the penalty in place for 11 prisoners on death
row. In 2015, the State Supreme Court declared capital punishment inconsistent with Connecticut’s Constitution, thus effectively commuting the death penalties pending against all death row prisoners to life
in prison.
The Court pulled out of the usual sociological hat the
relevant mumbo-jumbo to give heft to their decision. The death penalty, the
justices found, “no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and
no longer serves any legitimate penological purpose.” The majority decision was
written by Associate Justice Richard
Palmer, who was joined by three other justices. The Court arrived at this sunburst
only three years after Connecticut’s backward General Assembly had exempted the
11 death row prisoners from the death penalty repeal law.
For years, courts have been in the habit of boldly going
where electable legislators fear to tread. Judges are not subject to the whimsy
of voters who might just believe that capital punishment, under limited circumstances – multiple murders such as occurred in Sandy Hook Elementary
School, terrorist multiple murders, the murder of police officers or prison officials,
murder committed by a prisoner who has been sentenced to life for a
previous murder, etc. – is fully justified and might be useful as a deterrent
to criminals contemplating comparable mayhem.
Anti-death penalty advocates argued unpersuasively that the
death penalty was not a deterrent, prompting some disputatious rationalists to
point out that if the death penalty was not a deterrent, neither were lesser
penalties. Those supporting abolition of the death penalty on such flimsy grounds
were really advocating for the abolition of all penal punishment. Why not open
the prison doors and send the inmates to college, Lawlor’s solution to
recidivism, close down the courts and read the last rights over a very
expensive, moribund judicial apparatus? In fact, all punishments un-applied are
non-deterrent. Connecticut’s death penalty, however just in some cases, died
the death of a thousand cuts; it expired from relentless appeals and delays. The
Supreme Court delivered its much appreciated death blow by resorting to
sociological gibberish.
Sitting on the Supreme Court when the death penalty was at
long last dispatched was McDonald, a fierce advocate for abolition when he was,
along with Lawlor, co-chair of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.
McDonald did not feel the need to recuse himself from the decision, which was a
little bit like Typhoid Mary failing to rescue herself from a Red Cross blood
line.
The animosity of Judiciary Co-Chairs McDonald and Lawlor toward the Catholic Church in Connecticut burst into bloom several years ago when the two attempted to
smuggle through the General Assembly Raised Bill No. 1098 which, had it been
adopted, would have stripped bishops and archbishops in all Catholic Churches of their authority to direct the funds of their parishes; the
bill also would have changed the financing structure of the Catholic Church
from an apostolic to a corporate structure now found in some Protestant
churches. Their bill, concealed under an innocuous title and submitted at the end of a
legislative session, occasioned a massive rally at the State Capitol.
The doctrine of the Catholic Church, to borrow a phrase from
U.S. Senator
Dianne Feinstein, does not live loudly in either politician.
Their attempt to alter the apostolic nature of Connecticut’s Catholic Church
was aborted by a populist resistance; Connecticut is the fourth most populous
Catholic state in the U.S. But Supreme Court decisions that produce different
outcomes than legislatures are not subject to what has been called the vox
populi. Given the immunity judges enjoy from the usual, sometimes arcane,
democratic corrective process, one wants to be sure that any Supreme Court
Chief Justice is free from such crippling political prejudices.
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