First Time On Death Row
Taborsky is an anomaly in Connecticut death penalty lore. He is the only convict sent to death row not once, but twice, for different crimes. Taborsky first came to Connecticut's death row for the 1950 murder of Louis Wolfson, a West Hartford liquor store owner, during a robbery. His younger brother Albert, who was also his co-conspirator, testified against Taborsky at the trial in exchange for a life sentence. In prison, however, Albert exhibited signs of mental illness and was institutionalized. Joseph Taborsky, having learned through the prison grapevine that his brother Albert wound up in an insane asylum, appealed his case. In 1955, the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed Taborsky's conviction (and death sentence) because the sole witness against him - Albert - was incurably insane. Because there were no other witnesses to the robbery and murder of Wolfson, Taborsky could not be tried again. Thus, he was freed from death row, after less than three years, in early October 1955. Taborsky appeared appropriately humble, stating, "You can't beat the law. From now on, I'm not even going to get a parking ticket."
Read more about this topic: Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky
Famous quotes containing the words time, death and/or row:
“The secret of a long life is knowing when it’s time to go.”
—Michele Shocked (b. 1962)
“Perhaps it is nothingness which is real and our dream which is non-existent, but then we feel think that these musical phrases, and the notions related to the dream, are nothing too. We will die, but our hostages are the divine captives who will follow our chance. And death with them is somewhat less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps less probable.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The church is a sort of hospital for men’s souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor’s Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)