USA - -Connecticut. Judge Robert Devlin re-sentenced Russell Peeler Jr. to 2 consecutive life sentences

Judge Robert Devlin sentenced Russell Peeler Jr. to 2 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of release. Peeler, 44, was resentenced Friday. He was the 2nd of Connecticut's 11 formerly condemned prisoners to be resentenced since a landmark Supreme Court ruling that spared their lives. The 2 new life sentences for Peeler were added to a life sentence Peeler is already serving for federal drug crimes as well as a 105-year prison sentence he faces for a separate killing. Peeler, 44, Black, was sentenced to death in 2007 for ordering the 1999 killings of Karen Clarke and her 8-year-old son Leroy "B.J." Brown. The boy and his mother were slated to testify against the older Peeler at an upcoming murder trial. The actual killer, his younger brother Adrian Peeler, 38, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for his role in the slayings. Connecticut abolished the death penalty in April 2012 but made the law prospective, meaning it applied only to new cases and kept in place the death sentences for those already on death row. Attorneys for the death-row inmates challenged the law, saying it violated the condemned inmates' constitutional rights. In August 2015, the justices ruled 4-3 to ban capital punishment for all defendants, saying in the majority decision that Connecticut's death penalty no longer fit with societal values and served no valid purpose as punishment. The Supreme Court's 5-2 decision in May, which upheld its 2015 ruling, said capital punishment in Connecticut is unconstitutional for everyone. The ruling overturned Peeler's death sentences and ordered the lower court to impose a new punishment of life in prison without the possibility of release.