Who's Who on Death Row

The state’s death penalty is not going anywhere. Nor are the 10 folks who are currently on the toughest row of Connecticut’s convicts.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed legislation Friday that would have abolished it and replaced it with life in prison without parole.

The most recent execution occurred May 13, 2005. Michael Ross, convicted of raping and killing several eastern Connecticut women in the 1980s, was executed by lethal injection.

Ten inmates currently sit on Connecticut's death row:

• Lazale Ashby, 24, was convicted of raping and murdering his 21-year-old neighbor, Elizabeth Garcia, in her apartment on Dec. 2, 2002. The crime occurred four days after his 18th birthday.
• Jessie Campbell III, 29, was convicted in the Aug. 26, 2000, shooting deaths in Hartford of 20-year-old LaTaysha Logan and 18-year-old Desiree Privette, and the shooting of Privette's aunt, Carolyn Privette.
• Robert Breton, 62, was convicted in the Dec. 13, 1987, beating and stabbing deaths of his 38-year-old ex-wife and their 16-year-old son in Waterbury.
• Sedrick "Ricky" Cobb, 47, a former deliveryman from Naugatuck, was convicted in the rape and murder of 23-year-old Julia Ashe of Watertown on Dec. 16, 1989.
• Robert Courchesne, 51, was convicted in the Sept. 15, 1998, deaths of Demetris Rodgers and her baby. Rodgers was eight months pregnant when she was stabbed over a $410 drug debt. Her baby was delivered by emergency Caesarean section minutes after her death, but died 42 days later.
• Russell Peeler Jr., 37, was convicted of ordering the 1999 killing of 8-year-old Leroy "B.J." Brown Jr. and his mother, Karen Clarke, in their Bridgeport duplex. The boy was expected to be the key witness against Peeler in the fatal shooting of Clarke's boyfriend.
• Richard Reynolds, 40, a Brooklyn, N.Y., crack dealer, was convicted in the Dec. 18, 1992, murder of Waterbury police Officer Walter T. Williams.
• Daniel Webb, 46, was convicted of kidnapping and murder for the 1989 slaying in Hartford of Diane Gellenbeck, a 37-year-old Connecticut National Bank vice president.
• Eduardo Santiago, 29, Santiago was convicted of shooting 45-year-old Joseph Niwinksi in the left temple as he slept in his apartment in December 2000. Prosecutors say he carried out the murder-for-hire scheme in exchange for a snowmobile.
• Todd Rizzo, 30, confessed was convicted in the 1997 murder of 13-year-old Stanley Edwards of Waterbury. He lured Edwards into his backyard under the guise of hunting snakes, and then hit him 13 times with a 3-pound sledgehammer.