Russell Peeler Jr. was a Bridgeport man who stood trial for one killing in 1998 and was then convicted of arranging two more in 1999. Rudolph Snead Jr. died in May 1998. Eight months later Karen Clarke, aged 29, and her eight-year-old son, Leroy, known as B.J., were killed in Bridgeport. The boy had been expected to testify against Peeler in the case over Snead's death, and Clarke was Snead's partner.
Peeler was convicted of Snead's murder in 1999 and sentenced to 105 years. A jury convicted him in 2000 of murder, two counts of capital felony and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of Clarke and her son. His younger brother, Adrian, was tried separately and convicted only of conspiracy. Peeler's own case was in the courts for sixteen years after that verdict. The Connecticut Supreme Court threw out the first Snead conviction because of a ruling about his lawyer, a jury later sentenced him to death, and the state's abolition of capital punishment in 2012 led to that sentence being set aside in 2016. After the 2016 resentencing he was held under a life sentence with no possibility of release.
Peeler was 27 at his sentencing in December 1999; his date and place of birth are not on record.
The case begins on September 2, 1997, when Rudolph Snead Jr. was targeted in Bridgeport. Two seven-year-old boys were present, and one of them was Leroy. Peeler was charged with attempted murder in connection with that day, and two counts of risk of injury to a child concern the boys. He was released on bond while the charge waited for trial.
On May 29, 1998, Snead was killed in Bridgeport, and Peeler was charged with his murder. He was again released on bond. Peeler and Snead had known each other and were said to be in a dispute over money. With Snead dead, the boy was the only witness left to the 1997 events, and prosecutors planned to call him as their key witness at Peeler's trial.
Leroy, known as B.J., was eight years old. He had been present in 1997, and he agreed to speak with authorities after Snead's death.
His mother, Karen Clarke, was 29. She had been Snead's partner. In 1998 police had watched over the family for a few days; Clarke asked for that protection to stop because she found it intrusive and conspicuous, and it was withdrawn. The state's budget for witness protection at that time was $30,000 a year.
Clarke and her son were killed in Bridgeport on January 7, 1999. They had been on the state's witness list for Peeler's trial, which was still about a month away. Police questioned Peeler soon afterward, though he was not charged immediately. He was arrested on April 14, 1999.
Peeler's trial for the Snead matter went ahead in Bridgeport Superior Court in September and October 1999 before Judge G. Sarsfield Ford, while the charges over the Clarke and Leroy killings were still waiting. The jury convicted him of murder, attempted murder and two counts of risk of injury to a child. On December 10, 1999, he was sentenced to 105 years, the maximum, and the judge said of him: "He doesn't deserve any consideration." Prosecutors said that Clarke and her son had been killed to prevent the boy from testifying. Peeler and his brother both pleaded not guilty to the killings of the two witnesses.
In November 1999 he was also tried and convicted in a federal narcotics case; the sentence in that case is not on record.
The trial over the 1999 deaths came in 2000. The state's case was that Peeler had directed the killings of the two witnesses. Peeler was convicted on all counts: murder, two counts of capital felony under General Statutes (Rev. to 1999) § 53a-54b (8) and (9), and conspiracy to commit murder. The jury then heard the penalty phase and deadlocked on whether to impose death. On the count concerning the boy it could not agree whether aggravating factors outweighed mitigating factors, and on the count concerning the double death it could not agree whether the state had proved an aggravating factor. Judge Ford refused a motion by the state for a mistrial and imposed life imprisonment without the possibility of release.
Adrian Peeler's trial ended on March 2, 2001. The jury acquitted him of murder and of capital felony and convicted him of conspiracy to commit murder. He received a sentence of twenty years.
The Connecticut Supreme Court decided two appeals in the Peeler matters before the end of 2004. On August 19, 2003, in the Snead case, it reversed the judgment and ordered a new trial. The trial court, it held, had wrongly disqualified Gary Mastronardi, the lawyer Peeler had chosen, in violation of his right to counsel of his choice. Because the state had not shown that the lawyer's testimony was needed, the court did not decide Peeler's other claims.
On October 12, 2004, in the Clarke and Leroy case, it affirmed all of Peeler's convictions. It found that the withholding of a witness's mental health records had violated his confrontation rights but that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. It rejected his challenges to the jury instructions on conspiracy and intent and his claim that the judge should have stepped aside. On the state's own appeal against the sentence, the court agreed that the trial court should have granted the mistrial, reversed the life sentence and ordered a new penalty hearing on both capital felony counts. The United States Supreme Court declined to review the case in 2005.
Peeler became unable to pay for a lawyer after the 2003 reversal. Mastronardi would not work for the assigned-counsel rate and the public defender's division would not pay his private fees. The trial court denied a motion that the state fund him, or else dismiss the charges, and appointed another lawyer, Robert Sullivan. Peeler was tried again before Judge Kavanewsky, and the jury found him "guilty on all counts." The total effective sentence was again 105 years, to run consecutively to any sentence he was then serving.
He appealed on the ground that the trial court had not honored the 2003 remedy. On March 8, 2016, the Supreme Court affirmed. A defendant whose chosen counsel was wrongly disqualified is entitled to a new trial, it held, and the court has to ask whether that lawyer is willing and able to take the case on mutually acceptable terms; he is not entitled to have the state pay a private fee. The date of the retrial is not on record.
The new penalty hearing in the Clarke and Leroy case began in 2007 in Bridgeport before Judge Robert Devlin. A jury was selected for the sentencing alone; its selection took four months, and testimony was heard from September 10, 2007. The jury of six men and six women deliberated from October 10 and on Monday, October 15, 2007, recommended a sentence of death. The prosecutor told the jury, "Russell was the engineer of the entire thing."
Devlin formally sentenced Peeler to death on December 10, 2007, at a hearing in Bridgeport.
His appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court raised 33 issues, and the court first heard argument on July 10, 2014. By then the law had changed.
In 2012 the General Assembly abolished the death penalty for offenses committed in the future, at the urging of the governor, Dannel P. Malloy. The repeal did not reach those already sentenced, and eleven men remained on death row when it took effect. In August 2015, in State v. Santiago, the Connecticut Supreme Court held by a vote of 4-3 that carrying out a death sentence for a crime committed before the repeal would violate the state constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Peeler's appeal had been argued before that decision, and the court ordered further argument on November 30, 2015, which was heard on January 7, 2016. On May 26, 2016, it followed Santiago, reversed the two death sentences and ordered the trial court to impose life imprisonment without the possibility of release on each capital felony count. It affirmed the judgment in all other respects, and it did not reach his other claims. Justice Zarella dissented. The same month the court declined to overturn Santiago itself, by a vote of 5-2, and two justices who had opposed Santiago joined the majority because of stare decisis.
On July 1, 2016, Peeler was resentenced to life without the possibility of release.
Peeler filed a state habeas corpus petition on November 3, 2008, and an amended eleven-count petition on April 4, 2014. The habeas court denied it after a trial, and in February 2017 a three-judge panel of the Appellate Court affirmed that ruling. It rejected his four claims, which concerned self-representation, procedural default, ineffective appellate counsel, and the prosecution's disclosure duties under Brady v. Maryland. No later change to the sentence is on record.
The deaths of Clarke and her son led directly to a change in Connecticut law. Public Act 99-240, enacted in 1999, created a state witness protection program, which now bears the names of the mother and her son.
Russell Peeler pleaded not guilty in both matters. In the Snead matter the Supreme Court reversed the first conviction on a ruling about counsel and not on the evidence, and the second jury convicted him on all counts. In the Clarke and Leroy matter the jury convicted him of conspiracy and capital felony, while his brother, tried separately, was acquitted of murder and capital felony and convicted of conspiracy.
September 2, 1997: Rudolph Snead Jr. is targeted in Bridgeport; Peeler is charged with attempted murder and released on bond.
May 29, 1998: Snead is killed in Bridgeport; Peeler is charged with murder and released on bond.
January 7, 1999: Karen Clarke, 29, and Leroy, 8, are killed in Bridgeport.
April 14, 1999: Peeler is arrested in the Clarke and Leroy matter.
September to October 1999: Peeler is tried and convicted in the Snead case.
December 10, 1999: He is sentenced to 105 years.
June 2000: He is convicted on all counts in the Clarke and Leroy matter; the penalty jury deadlocks and life without release is imposed.
March 2, 2001: Adrian Peeler is convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and acquitted of murder and capital felony.
August 19, 2003: The Supreme Court reverses the Snead conviction and orders a new trial.
October 12, 2004: The Supreme Court affirms the Clarke and Leroy convictions and orders a new penalty hearing.
October 15, 2007: A new jury recommends death.
December 10, 2007: Peeler is sentenced to death.
March 8, 2016: The Supreme Court affirms the Snead retrial conviction.
May 26, 2016: The Supreme Court reverses the death sentences and orders life without release.
July 1, 2016: Peeler is resentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of release.
February 2017: The Appellate Court affirms the denial of his habeas petition.