Union: We didn’t know former death row inmates were coming to general population in CT prisons
Union officials said the state Department of Correction failed to inform them about former death row prisoners being transferred to other facilities as Connecticut prepares to close its maximum security prison.
“There was no notice,” said AFSCME Local 391 President Collin Provost, who represents 1,500 DOC employees, including correction officers, kitchen supervisors, maintenance staff, correction counselors and others. “It’s discouraging when you get a call from one of your members saying, ‘Hey a death row inmate wound up in my general population, why didn’t they tell anyone?’”
In February, the state Commissioner of Correction Angel Quiros announced the July 1 closing of Northern Correctional Institution, the state’s “supermax” prison where the former death row inmates were being held. On March 11, a federal court ruling deemed the “special circumstances” security status for death row inmates was unconstitutional.
This suddenly changed the landscape on how the DOC would move forward in dealing with those who had the special circumstances designation.
With the transfers becoming necessary, Provost said no input was sought from the correction officers or other union staff.
“That’s the challenging part for my members. We weren’t brought into the conversation on how they were handling the transfer for those who are being held under special circumstances,” Provost said.
The special circumstances designation became law when the death penalty was abolished in Connecticut in 2012. It requires former death row inmates to be held in more isolated circumstances than other prisoners, regardless of their behavior.
The DOC said it notified leadership of the unions, but there was little that could be done because the inmates needed to be transferred.
“The agency communicated with leadership from all of the different unions associated with the Department of Correction, including the NP4 president representing front-line staff,” said Karen Martucci, spokeswoman for the agency. “There was no room for negotiating how this move would take place since the direction and timeframes were dictated through the legal court decision.”
Four of the 10 former death row inmates, Richard Reynolds, Daniel Webb, Jessie Campbell and Todd Rizzo, who are serving life sentences, have been moved to the MacDougall Building of the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, a level four and five maximum security prison in Suffield.
Northern’s four remaining inmates, Russell Peeler, Sedrick Cobb, Robert Breton and Richard Roszkowski, are expected to be moved by July 1.
Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, who were convicted of killing three female members of the Petit family in 2007, have been serving their life sentences in a Pennsylvania prison and are not impacted by the transfers. Komisarjevsky was from Cheshire and Hayes was from Winsted.
The state Supreme Court in 2020 overturned the conviction of an 11th former death row inmate, Lazale Ashby, who will likely be retried.
The state’s former death row inmates were reclassified as “special circumstances high security status” by the General Assembly in 2012 in an offering to those legislators who were reluctant to vote in favor of abolishing the Connecticut death penalty, said state Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, co-chair of the judiciary committee.
“It made lawmakers feel better about what they were doing,” said Winfield, who pushed for the end of the death penalty as a new state legislator in 2009.
Legislators were also keenly aware of the issues caused by Komisarjevsky and Hayes, who were convicted and sentenced to death in the killings of Michaela and Hayley Petit and their mother Jennifer Hawke-Petit during a Cheshire home invasion in
2007. Dr. William Petit, the sole survivor of the attack, and his family championed the death penalty for the two perpetrators.
The legislature abolished the death penalty “prospectively,” which meant the men on death row would still receive death sentences. Their continued confinement was defined by a separate change in the law, which required the state commissioner of correction to keep the 11 inmates who had received death sentences in the same isolated conditions as they were on death row.
That meant the former death row inmates were kept in separate cells with little opportunity to leave, few educational programs and no contact with anyone other than those serving under the same status, Martucci said.
“Their sentences were converted to life without the possibility of release when the death penalty was abolished,” Martucci said. “They were managed by a state statute (CGS
18-10b) and their movement from Northern CI is in response to a federal appeals court decision declaring that part of that state statute is unconstitutional.”
Reynolds, who was convicted in the killing of a Waterbury police officer in the early 1990s, challenged the “special circumstances” designation in federal court after the state Supreme Court ruled the law that abolished the death penalty “prospectively” was unconstitutional.
Reynolds won his case in U.S. District Court in 2019 on the grounds that the DOC failed to provide “even minimal due process protections,” including allowing him any advance notice or hearing on his reclassification to “special circumstances high security status,” records show. The ruling banned the DOC from enforcing the special circumstances status against any other current or future inmate, court filings said.
The DOC appealed in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The Second Circuit court tossed out some of the U.S. District Court’s ruling, but agreed with Reynolds that the law establishing the special circumstances designation was unconstitutional.
By the time the appeals court ruling was issued, Quiros had already announced his intent to close Northern under heavy pressure from prison reform advocacy groups.
The DOC has since been working on the transition of the former death row inmates to other facilities, Martucci said. They all will remain in maximum security settings, she said.
“We’ll look at their risk and their needs and place them where it is most appropriate,” Martucci said.
Union officials do not have a problem with the inmates being placed in the general population, Provost said.
“The employees that I represent deal with violent people every day,” he said. “They don’t have to be on death row to be violent. They could be serving a 10-year sentence or even be imprisoned for a violation of probation.”
But Provost and several union members do have a problem with the agency not notifying staff that the former death row inmates were being transferred to certain facilities.
“Correction officers are always on guard,” Provost said. “When they step into a restaurant and have a seat and then see a person who was formerly incarcerated walk in the door, it changes their perception. It’s the same when any of the former death row inmates show up in your general population. There’s a change in your perception. Correction officers are responsible for the safety of all inmates. When you bring in someone with some notoriety, there’s going to be a difference in how you look at things.”