Presidential Hopeful Lindsey Graham Chides Connecticut Judges Over Death Penalty Ruling

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican presidential candidate, told national radio host Michael Medved that the Connecticut Supreme Court’s recent decision that the death penalty violates the state’s constitution makes him “want to throw up.”

All prisoners that had been on Connecticut’s death row have been spared the death penalty following last week’s ruling, in a 4-3 decision.

• Related: Dr. William Petit Reacts to Death Penalty Ruling

State lawmakers got rid of the death penalty in 2012 and had made it so that inmates already on death row would be executed but last week’s ruling spares the lives of those on death row.

The provision was added after the trials of Cheshire home invasion killers and rapists Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, according to the Hartford Courant. Both are on death row.

Hayes and Komisarjevsky were both convicted, in separate trials, with felony murder and sentenced to death for the 2007 killings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her children, Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17.

Graham told Medved, via Buzzfeed, “It is such an outrage to me. I don’t know how the judges can live with themselves, but the law is the law. You know if I’m president of the United States, under my administration, my Attorney General - we’re going to prosecute people like this to the fullest extent of the law. I doubt if there’s any federal jurisdiction in a case like this, but it would be worth looking at.”

Read more at Buzzfeed.com here.