Gov. Dannel Malloy has nominated state Supreme Court Justice Andrew McDonald to be the court's chief justice. But the pick has stirred controversy. Republicans say he is partisan and that when he was serving as a state legislator, he backed a potentially unconstitutional bill and should have recused himself from a ruling that abolished the state's death penalty in 2015 because he earlier had backed legislation to abolish the death penalty. Democrats and judicial officials support the nominee, praising his work on the bench.