Updated at 10:00 a.m. ET: With the Connecticut Senate voting early Thursday to repeal the death penalty, the state is poised to become the fifth in five years to end the practice.

Legislative action was delayed last year amid the high-profile prosecution of a death penalty case involving a brutal home invasion that left a mother and her two daughters dead. But after a debate that stretched into the early morning hours Thursday, the Senate voted 20-16 to approve legislation that would replace the death penalty with life without parole.

“Connecticut’s criminal justice system has taken a historic step forward. In a system of justice that is no(t) perfect, we must not employ a penalty that requires perfection. The punishment of life in prison without the possibility of release makes more sense,” Senate President Donald E. Williams, Jr., a Democrat, said in a statement. “These inmates will face conditions that are similar to and in some cases more severe than conditions on death row. It is a punishment and sentence that is certain and final.”

The bill will now head to the House of Representatives, where observers say it is likely to pass. Gov. Daniel Malloy has said he would sign the legislation because it is forward looking, and not retroactive to those already sitting on death row.

Senate leadership held a press conference at the Capitol Wednesday ahead of the vote, with families of murder victims joining them. Senate Republican opponents organized their own news conference, which was attended by the lone survivor of the home invasion case in Cheshire and families of other murder victims.

“For those who say that we should execute those 11 (currently on death row) but none going further, the only way to keep that promise … is to keep our death penalty law,” Republican State Sen. John McKinney said. “I also think we need to talk about the message it sends that some who murder viciously the families in Connecticut should face the death penalty but others should not. Are we … saying that those families and the lives of those victims are somehow less important? For me, that is a wrong and terrible message to send.”

A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that the state's voters are against repealing the death penalty by a margin of 62 percent to 31 percent. A 2011 poll showed that 48 percent of those surveyed preferred the death penalty over life in prison with no chance of parole (43 percent) in first-degree murder cases.

"As we've seen in past Quinnipiac University polls, Connecticut voters still think abolishing the death penalty is a bad idea," said Douglas Schwartz, poll director. "No doubt the gruesome Cheshire murders still affect public opinion regarding convicts on death row."

AP Photo/Jessica Hill

Episcopal Bishops Laura Ahrens, left, and Bishop Ian Douglas rally at the state Capitol with religious leaders who oppose the death penalty in Hartford, Conn., on Tuesday.

'Clear trend'
If the legislation passes the House and is signed by the governor, Connecticut would be the fifth state in five years to repeal the death penalty, joining 16 others that have no capital punishment. California voters will decide in November whether to also do away with it.

“This was a courageous and historic vote, but it was also in line with a growing trend away from the death penalty around the country. Connecticut’s legislature has come to the same conclusion that other legislatures have recently made: the death penalty is too risky, too expensive, and too unfair to continue," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), said in a statement.

A bill to repeal Connecticut's death penalty passed in 2009, but then Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed it. Last year, the bill made it through the joint House and Senate Judiciary Committee. But it died before a full Senate vote after a few senators withdrew their support because a second man charged in the Cheshire home invasion case was about to go on trial, said Ben Jones, executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty.

But it is now possible to have the death penalty debate not amid the “heated nature of a capital trial," so "people are able to think about it more at a systematic level,” said Shari Silberstein, executive director of Equal Justice USA.

Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes were convicted in the 2007 Cheshire killings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. The girls were tied to their beds and doused in gasoline before the house was set ablaze; they died of smoke inhalation; their mother was strangled.

George Ruhe / AP

Authorities outside the home of Dr. William Petit, a noted specialist in diabetes, in Cheshire, Conn., on Monday July 23, 2007. Intruders broke into his home, held the family hostage and killed his wife and two daughters.

The lone survivor of the invasion, Dr. William A. Petit Jr., along with his sister, Johanna Petit-Chapman, oppose the repeal.

“We believe in the death penalty because we believe it is really the only true just punishment for certain heinous and depraved murders. One thing you never hear the abolitionists talk about is the victims, almost never, the forgotten people. The people who died and can’t be heard to speak for themselves,” Petit said at a press conference. “I think prospective (not retroactive) repeal of the death penalty is false. There’ll be multiple appeals for people already on death row.”

Williams, the Senate president, said before the vote that similar legislation has withstood judicial reviews.

"We're very respectful of those who are in favor of the death penalty," he said. "Yet those folks who have already been convicted and are serving under the prior rules of conviction do not have their sentences altered."

If the legislation becomes law, it would apply to capital offenses committed on or after the effective date of the act. It creates new conditions for those convicted of “murder with special circumstances” -- previously capital crimes -- including being moved to a new cell every 90 days and only having two hours a day out of their cell.

There are 11 inmates on Connecticut's death row. The state has carried out one execution since 1976. Connecticut’s Office of Fiscal Analysis estimated that the state spends $5 million a year on the death penalty system, according to the DPIC.

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Artist Danica Phelps stands amid panels of her work in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

When the end of a longtime relationship cost artist Danica Phelps her home, she used her creative energies to chart the troubled period in her life. The result: A work of art that incorporates an eight-page court ruling that she says pushed her down the path toward foreclosure.

Titled "The Cost of Love," the 25-panel piece weaves 350,000 tiny red-hued stripes -- in shades of cherry, burgundy, peach  and pink – together with words from the ruling, including "animosity," "eviction," "mortgage," "girlfriends," "child," "donor" and "insemination."

"This is the whole decision represented in these panels," Phelps, 40, said recently at Brennan & Griffin, the art gallery that represents her and is showing her work in Manhattan's Lower East Side neighborhood through Sunday. "I didn't want my emotion to be represented. What I wanted was to put out this word for word and to allow the viewer to have their own emotional reaction to it."

Phelps, who has used similar striping in previous pieces, said the genesis of her latest creation occurred in 2009, when her relationship with an ex-girlfriend unraveled and she decided to move out of the four-unit apartment building she owned in New York.

After moving in with relatives and unsuccessfully attempting to persuade her ex to move out of the apartment they had shared for three years, Phelps initiated eviction proceedings. 

Once a family
But on June 2, 2010, Housing Court Judge Laurie L. Lau dismissed the case. Because Phelps and her ex-girlfriend had been a “familial unit” when they moved in together and jointly parented a now 3-year-old-boy named Orion born to Phelps through artificial insemination, Lau wrote, the latter was not subject to eviction under New York City law.

"While their relationship has obviously deteriorated into one of animosity and hostility, the evidence establishes the parties had intended to form a lasting familial unit,” the judge said. “It has been held that 'lifetime partners whose relationship is long term and characterized by an emotional and financial commitment and interdependence,' ... satisfy the definition of 'family' for purposes of the Rent Stabilization Code."

Irishman makes 'billion-euro home' from old notes to protest economic 'madness'

Phelps then decided to stop paying the mortgage on the apartment building, which is now in the midst of foreclosure. A real estate agent is trying to help her arrange a short sale (an agreement between a lender, a buyer and a seller in which the lender agree to accept less than the total loan) to avoid that.

She calculates her financial loss at $350,000, hence the number of red stripes in her artwork.

John Makely / msnbc.com

Close-up shows detail of one panel of Danica Phelps' work, 'The Cost of Love.'

"I know that this show sounds like it’s about the cost of having been in that relationship, but what the meaning is to me actually is the cost of maintaining Orion's happiness and his future," she said of her son. "If I have to lose the house ... I feel like it's actually a small price to pay."

$26 a letter
To make the panels – each of which represents one paragraph of the court decision -- Phelps first counted the numbers of the letters in the text – approximately 13,000 -- and divided 350,000 by that number. That worked out to $26 a letter.

She then took large pieces of paper and drew lines according to the value of each word.

For example, a 13-letter word would be worth $338, and thus would be followed by 338 stripes. She glued words from the judge’s ruling on large pieces of paper and painted the lines around them, using a mix of watercolor and gouache – a form of watercolor with more pigmentation.

The foreclosure crisis, Beverly Hills-style

She then cut the paper into rows and glued them onto birch plywood. At the bottom of each panel is the "cost" represented and the paragraph it represents from the ruling.

Phelps, who had other artists help her with some of her earlier stripe art, said she wanted to do this one herself, even though it took her five months to finish it.

“I felt like each stripe should be painted by me,” she said with a sigh. “It's like letting go of the house, every single penny of it. And once I’ve painted it, it's gone."

She said she found the process peaceful and healing, though some viewers don’t get that sense when they view it.

"People have said, 'Oh it's so dark … all that red is so angry,'” she said. “I look in here and it's glowing to me. … I feel like I accomplished what I set out to, which is to turn something that was depressing to me into something very beautiful."

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AP file

Joshua Komisarjevsky,

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- A Connecticut man was sentenced Friday to die for killing a woman and her two daughters during a night of terror in their suburban home, a gruesome crime that unsettled the suburbs and halted momentum to abolish the death penalty in the state.

Joshua Komisarjevsky will be joining Steven Hayes on death row for killing Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. He is scheduled to be executed in July.

The girls were tied to their beds and doused in gasoline before the house was set ablaze; they died of smoke inhalation. Komisarjevsky was convicted of the killings and of sexually assaulting Michaela.

The only survivor, Dr. William Petit, was beaten with a baseball bat and tied up but escaped.

"I will never find peace within. My life will be a continuation of the hurt I caused," Komisarjevsky said in court. "The clock is now ticking and I owe a debt I cannot repay."

Komisarjevsky said he walked out of court condemned to die by 12 members of the community. 

"It's a surreal experience, being condemned to die," Komisarjevsky said.

Forgiveness is not his to have, he said, and he needs to forgive his worst enemy -- himself.

Read story at NBCConnecticut.com

Before the sentencing, Judge Jon Blue said sentencing another human being to death is the most somber task a judge can have.

The court then heard some emotional victim impact statements from the Hawke and Petit families.

Petit read his statement as a slide show of his family played on the screen.

Petit called the crime a "personal holocaust" as he testified during the sentencing hearing. He said his wife was his friend and confidante, and a wonderful mother. He also noted that Hayley would have been in medical school by now and that Michaela loved to cook and sing.

"I lost my family and my home," he said. "They were three special people. Your children are your jewels."

Michaela came into the world smiling, Petit said. He recently received a card from one of Michaela's friends. It said it was sad to know that she wouldn't be in 10th grade this year.

"I miss her running to the door and yelling 'Dada's home,'” Petit said.

'Was it worth the price?'
The Rev. Richard Hawke spoke directly to the convicted killer and said he’s presided over many funerals, but never dreamed he would bury his daughter and grandchildren. It was the worst thing he’s had to go through.  

"Was it worth the price?" he asked at one point.

If Jennifer, Hayley and Michaela could endure the pain that Komisarjevsky put them through, their families can endure the pain of the trials, Hawke said.

“You have not only destroyed your family, you have destroyed your own and destroyed a noble family name,” Hawke told the man who killed his family members.

The statement from Jennifer’s mother, Marybelle Hawke, was also played in court and she said the love of family will carry them through.

The Petit and Hawke families left court before the sentence was handed down.

Lawyers fought for jurors to hear videotaped testimony from Komisarjevsky’s 9-year-old daughter, but the defendant made a plea against it. 

Last month, a jury delivered the death verdict for Komisarjevsky after finding him guilty of the crimes. On Friday, the judge handed down that sentence.

The Associated Press and NBCConnecticut.com contributed to this report.

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