House clears McDonald for 2nd term

In a divided vote, the House of Representatives on Thursday approved Associate Supreme Court Justice Andrew J. McDonald for a second eightyear term on Connecticut’s highest court.

The 104-37 vote came after a halfhour debate in which opponents including conservative Republicans led by Rep. Criag Fishbein of Wallingford, charged that McDonald was an “activist” judge. A smaller faction of three Democrats apparently held lingering resentment over the high court’s 2015 ruling that expanded the 2012 repeal of the death penalty to include those on Connecticut’s death row.

The nomination of McDonald, the longest-serving member of the high court, next heads to the state Senate.

“Justice McDonald is one of the rare people in the state of Connecticut who has admirable and distinguished service in all three branches of government,” said Rep. Steve Stafstrom, DBridgeport, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

McDonald, 54, a former state senator from Stamford and legal counsel under then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, received 15 votes from the 54-member Republican minority, following the criticism from Fishbein, who is ranking member of the legislative Judiciary Committee.

“Certainly there’s been concerns about activism from the bench,” said Fishbein, a lawyer. He noted that McDonald never served as a lower court judge, after being nominated directly from his Capitol legal office to the Supreme Court by Malloy. “I’ve heard a lot of good things. His colleagues report that he’s great to work with. I’ve read many of his decisions.”

Fishbein cited a “dispute” on bail reform within the state Rules Committee of the Superior Court, upon which McDonald serves as chairman, as tipping the balance in his opposition to the nomination. Fishbein recently submitted proposed legislation on the issue .

Rep. Larry Butler, D-Waterbury, blamed McDonald for misleading lawmakers on the effect that the 2012 repeal of the death penalty would have on death row inmates.

The 2012 legislative bill, drafted by the Judiciary Committee when McDonald was no longer in the Senate and headed Malloy’s legal office, indicated that it would not protect death row inmates, said Butler, a software designer. But the 2015 high court ruling said that the repeal would have to include people sentenced to the death penalty for constitutional reasons of equal rights.

“We should stand for a higher standard here,” said Butler, a supporter of the death penalty, who cited the two men who participated in a home invasion and multiple murders in Cheshire in 2007. “We need to send a message that we don’t want judges legislating from the bench.”

But Rep. Bob Godfrey, D-Danbury, a lawyer and House member since 1989, said that the weakness in the 2012 legislation was its carving-out death row from the repeal. “I knew then, being an attorney, that was never going to stand under the 14th Amendment, under equal justice before the law, under due process, that that exception wasn’t going to stand,” Godfrey said.

“Remember this body and the Senate abolished the death penalty,” he said. “Not the court. Us. I voted no, but I accept those kinds of results all the time. I think that Justice McDonald has done a superb job because he’s really smart and he’s compassionate and he’s honest.”

Stafstrom then noted that McDonald did not author the ruling that allowed death row inmates to file appeals to avoid the death penalty. He added that the issue over bail reform, as cited by Fishbein, centered on a unanimous recommendation from the state Sentencing Commission to the Rules Committee, which unanimously approved the reform, and state judges also accepted it unanimously.