Andy Bromage Photo

State Rep. Mike Lawlor, an East Haven Democrat and death penalty opponent.

What are the odds Connecticut will abolish the death penalty this year? You would think next to zero.

The monsters charged in the Cheshire murders will be stirring up public vengeance with appearances in courtrooms and newspaper headlines, as the state pursues its highest profile capital felony case in years. The sour economy will crowd out lots of other business before the legislature. And public support for capital punishment was still around 60 percent when last polled.

But here's one reason this might be the year: the state budget crisis.

Opponents fight the death penalty for moral reasons, but some say the recession and Connecticut's $6 billion budget deficit present an opportunity to fight it on financial grounds.

Prosecuting murderers in death penalty cases is expensive. So is defending them, locking them up and actually sticking the needle in their arms, if it ever comes to that.

"Obviously, cost is not the reason to repeal it, but if that's what can get through to someone, why not?" says Ben Jones of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty.

One very important politician agrees with Jones. State Rep. Mike Lawlor, an East Haven Democrat and death penalty opponent who co-chairs the legislature's Judiciary Committee, says the time's right to debate capital punishment.

Lawlor says conditions that seemingly make 2009 unfavorable for repealing the death sentence — the public wanting blood for the Cheshire murders, the state's fiscal trouble — might actually work in its favor.

He figures:

• The Cheshire case will give the public a front-row seat to a drawn out, gut-wrenching death penalty case and the emotional toll it takes on everyone involved — especially the victims' families.

• Locking up murderers for life is actually cheaper than pursuing their execution and in a tough budget climate that argument might get new legs.

• Plus, the new leaders in the state House of Representatives, Speaker Chris Donovan and Majority Leader Denise Merrill, oppose the death penalty, as do new members on the Judiciary Committee.

"We're looking at two years of trials and 15 years of appeals," Lawlor says of the Cheshire case. "It's going to be a horrible ordeal for everyone to go through. If we didn't have the death penalty, these guys would be locked up for life by now."

Capital punishment cases can be hugely expensive, especially compared to life in prison without parole. A recent study by the Urban Institute found they cost Maryland taxpayers $3 million apiece — three times what non-death cases do. Kansas found capital felony cases cost 70 percent more, while in Tennessee it's 48 percent more.

Connecticut's own state Commission on the Death Penalty exposed in 2002 that defending the seven killers then on death row cost 88 percent more than murderers who got life in prison. The most expense case racked up a $1 million tab.

Death-row inmates are housed at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers at a cost of $46,942 a year. Many sentenced to life without parole end up at less expensive facilities like MacDougall Walker in Suffield ($29,454 a year) or Cheshire Correctional ($29,721).

The political cost to pro-death penalty lawmakers moved to change sides by these numbers was apparently left out of the study.

Connecticut is one of only two New England states with a death penalty, the other being New Hampshire. The state has only executed one person since 1960, serial killer Michael Ross, put to death by lethal injection in 2005 for the rapes and murders of four young women in the 1980s.

The exact cost of executing Ross is unknown but documents released after his death showed the state spent tens of thousands of dollars in petty cash in order to keep purchases related to the execution off the books. The Hartford Courant found, among other things, that the state spent: $25,000 to send staff for training at death chambers in other states; $4,875 on infrared illuminators to detect cameras smuggled into the witness gallery; and $599 for a James Bond–style "Spyfinder" camera detector that failed a test prior to execution.

Robert Nave, the outspoken director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, says the expense of capital punishment is "part of the jigsaw puzzle" but by no means the death knell for the death sentence.

"This is a very visceral issue," Nave says. "It goes far beyond dollars and cents."

Far more important, he says, is the new Democratic leadership in the legislature and new anti-death penalty lawmakers. Nave says he has the numbers to repeal, but wouldn't get the votes if the governor promised a veto. "Give me a governor who supports abolition and we'll have it this year," Nave says.

Gov. Jodi Rell supports the death penalty and refused to halt Ross's execution so the legislature could debate the death penalty, but who knows what she'd do if a bill landed on her desk. The governor's press office didn't respond to a request for comment.

editor@newhavenadvocate.com

Mother of Mercy

Antoinette Bosco had been a lifelong death penalty opponent when it all became tragically personal.

Her son John and his wife Nancy were murdered in cold blood as they slept in their Long Island home in 1993. They had just bought the house and weren't even finished unpacking when an intruder with a semi-automatic handgun came in the night and blew them both away.

"I walked into that room. There was blood on the wall. I dropped down on my knees and prayed to God," says Bosco, a devout Catholic, during a death penalty talk at a New Haven church last week.

The killer turned out to be the 15-year-old son of the family John and Nancy bought the house from, but a motive was never discovered. He went on trial and Bosco successfully petitioned the judge to give the murderer life without parole instead of the death sentence.

As the mother of murder victims, Bosco is one of the most compelling figures in the anti-death penalty movement and a powerful voice for justice without revenge. But choosing mercy hasn't been easy.

"Every day I have to say anew that I forgive him — every single day," Bosco says, who at 81 years old is still writing books and a syndicated column. "Forgiveness is always present tense. It must be renewed every day."