Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The old saw has it that “exceptions prove the rule.” They prove the rule precisely because they are exceptions. In Connecticut’s politicized Supreme Court, exceptions have BECOME the rule. That is what happened when Justice Richard Palmer constructed his decision on the Constitutionality of Connecticut’s death penalty on a dissent in Glossip v. Gross , a case in which a challenge to the death penalty on Constitutional grounds had been denied by the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol. The decision was a narrow one, but Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg managed in their dissent to import larger issues.

Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Harry Weller has argued in a brief he submitted to Connecticut’s Supreme Court that “Special counsel Thomas Groark cannot prosecute an appeal in the seemingly interminable Michael Ross case because “he is not a party” to ongoing litigation. Groark’s petition, therefore, “is inappropriate, unprecedented and should not be countenanced by this court.” Groark is petitioning Connecticut’s Supreme Court to review a decision made by Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford following an unprecedented hearing during which Clifford ruled that Michael Ross was mentally capable of deciding to forgo further appeals in his case. The hearing was unprecedented because a “final” decision on the matter of Ross’ competence had been made both by Connecticut’s highest court and the U.S. Supreme Court. These decisions were artfully subverted by Chief U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny. Hours before Ross was to be executed, Chatigny convened a questionable teleconferen...