Connecticut, The One Party State Of Secrecy And The Cloud Of Unknowing

Danbury State Attorney Stephen Sedensky, the keeper of the Sandy Hook secrets, has so far had a fairly easy time of it, but disquieting murmurs rend the air.

The Associated Press (AP) last July petitioned Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) to order the release of 911 tapes made during the mass shooting of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. The commission found – surprise! – that such information could not be withheld from the public merely because Mr. Sedensky asserted a criminal investigation was ongoing.

Not good enough, said the commission. Statutes do allow prosecutors to withhold 911 tapes, as well as other evidence, if charges are pending and a trial may be in the offing. Obviously, the premature release of information may adversely impact a prosecution and trial. The commission noted, however, that such was not the case in the Sandy Hook massacre. Much to the dismay of multiple parties whose political interests might be advanced by the withholding of all formally certified information relating to Sandy Hook, the FOI commission ordered the release of the 911 tapes because -- no trial was pending, virtually all of the direct witnesses to the crime were slain in the slaughter, and the release of such hard verifiable information was both routine in such cases and necessary for the advancement of the public good.

"In essence,” the FOIC noted in its decision, “the respondents' position is that the … records, as part of an ongoing criminal investigation where it is not yet known if a prosecution will ensue, are not required to be disclosed. However, the Appellate Court explicitly rejected this very argument."

Mr. Sedensky is appealing the FOIC decision. While it is true that Mr. Sedensky is running afoul of the governing statute in refusing to disclose the 911 calls, it is also true that the calls, and perhaps other releasable information, may be kept in the freezer until Mr. Sedensky exhausts his appeals. No one knows for certain what is driving the secrecy.

In a less than stinging rebuke, a Hartford paper urged the release of the tapes and noted, ominously, that “Connecticut’s FOI Act is being chipped away by the governor and the General Assembly.”

Indeed, Mr. Sedensky’s effort to draw a veil of secrecy around routinely released information is simply one among many efforts during the reign of Governor Dannel Malloy, once a prosecutor himself, to smother inconvenient data under a blanket of secrecy. The temptation to secrecy becomes more and more irresistible as Connecticut drifts further and further in the direction of a one party state.

The gun bill passed by the Connecticut Democratic dominated General Assembly should have relied on the unimpeachable evidence flowing from the release of the state’s twice delayed criminal report. It should be noted here that Republican leaders eagerly embraced the gun legislation produced by a General Assembly perfectly willing to develop legislation grounded in best guesses and surmises. The final gun bill was not presented at public hearing, during the course of which experts on guns, crime and punishment might have shaped the legislation. 

Mr. Malloy, the first Democratic governor in more than two decades, wrote his first budget without any input from the opposition Republican Party. Republicans were simply shooed away from the budget negotiating table, while Mr. Malloy, who had been invested with near plenipotentiary powers by the Democratic dominated General Assembly, negotiated back room deals with union leaders, who had become in effect Connecticut’s fourth branch of government. The reporter-proof, secretive back room negotiating sessions permitted Malloyalists to present the state with a fait accompli budget that included – no surprise here – the largest tax increase in state history, a spending and revenue plan that in effect made Mr. Malloy the state’s chief crony capitalist, and questionable “savings” that were more than offset by multiple year increases in union benefits and salaries.

A penological program developed by Mike Lawlor that rewards with early release credits prisoners who behave well while in prison was smuggled past critical legislators in an omnibus implementer bill. The benefits of the program were applied retrospectively to prisoners who were not subject to the supposed rehabilitative aspects of the program, and early release credits were given to violent criminals, one of whom, Frankie “The Razor” Resto, managed to acquire an illegal firearm he used to murder a storekeeper in Meriden, Connecticut. Michelle Cruz, then Connecticut’s Victims Advocate, spoke out publically against Mr. Lawlor’s poorly drafted, poorly executed program. Ms. Cruz’s job was then put on the auction block. Mr. Lawlor’s program still allows violent criminals such as rapists to avail themselves of early release credits.

Without strenuous objections from the new, more malleable Victims Advocate, (name, link), the Malloy administration arranged a plea deal with “The Razor” -- so called because as a gang-banger he used to shake down drug dealers with a razor – without allowing the family members of his victim to testify on the Lawlor-Malloy-Resto deal. The deal makers certainly were audacious: Statutes give the victims of violent criminals the right to testify in such cases.

These are the actions of politicians who are certain no one is looking over their shoulder. And why should they worry? The media, after all, cannot crash the political back rooms in which policy is made secretly with little public input. And in the one party state, all opposition from the party out of power may be safely disregarded. The reigning assumption among the power brokers is that people will not notice the bitter fruits of the one party state until the whole state of Connecticut comes to resemble Bridgeport or New Haven or Hartford, at which point all forward progress will be irreversible.

A Citizen’s Case Against The Malloy-Lawlor Early Release Program

When the Democratic dominated General Assembly perhaps unwittingly passed Bill HB 6650 establishing a Risk Reduction Earned Credits program for some prisoners incarcerated for violent crimes, the opposition from Republicans was nearly instantaneous. Then State Senator Len Suzio took the lead in agitating against the program. He was not alone.

In a June 6, 2011 media release,State Senator Joe Markley said that the program “amounts to a jail break.” Mr. Markley went on to list the categories of violent prisoners eligible for early release under the program:

Manslaughter in the first degree (with intent to cause serious injury)

Sexual assault in the first degree (sex with someone under the age of 13)

Kidnapping in the first degree (intent to inflict physical injury)

Arson in the first degree (intent to destroy an inhabited building)

Employing a minor in an obscene performance

Importing child pornography

Contaminating a public water supply or food supply for terrorist purposes

Injury or risk of injury to, or impairing morals of, children

Abandonment of child under the age of six years

Firearms trafficking (knowingly giving a firearm to someone barred from firearm possession)

Cruelty to animals (possessing an animal for fighting, intentionally killing a police dog)”

After two credited criminals celebrated their early release by murdering two shopkeepers, one in Meriden and one in Manchester, some media outlets began to take notice of deficiencies in the program. But even so, the drumbeat against early release was hardly ear-shattering. Mr. Lawlor and Mr. Malloy hunkered down and hoped for a reduction in the decibel level.

Connecticut Victims Advocate Michelle Cruz stirred the pot when, representing the interests of victimized families -- her job -- she publically petitioned for an end to the program after the early release of prisoner Kezlyn Mendez, charged with the murder of a store clerk in Manchester. Ms. Cruz’s job was put on the auction block by Mr. Malloy, and she has now been replaced by Garvin Ambrose, a political operative from Cook County, Illinois, murder capital of the United States. Mr. Ambrose was cited by a victims advocate group in Illinois as having been insufficiently concerned with the rights of crime victims.

The early release of Frankie “The Razor” Resto, so called because in freedom he was known for shaking down drug dealers with a razor, proved somewhat difficult to justify.

Mr. Resto was, by all accounts, an incorrigible prisoner. Behind bars he dealt drugs, racked up a disciplinary record that should have made him ineligible for early release and burned his mattress. The Lawlor-Malloy early release program was applied retroactively to the violent prisoners noted above in Mr. Markley’s press release, which means that in many cases accessibility to the program did not depend on good behavior. While serving time for a 2006 robbery conviction, Mr. Resto was allotted 199 days of credits toward early release. In Mr. Resto’s case, a violent prisoner was rewarded with early release credits for behavior that should have extended his sentence. The Lawlor-Malloy program was all carrot and no stick. Once out of jail, Mr. Resto illegally acquired a gun and murdered Ibraham Ghazal, the co-owner of an EZMart store in Meriden, according to arrest records.

The ham-fisted attempt by the Malloy administration to sanitize the predictable effects of its flawed early release program by ridding the political stage of opponents pointing to the blood on the floor may not succeed.

After political operatives in the General Assembly bound by party ties to the governor successfully smothered Republican introduced bills to eliminate the program and bills introduced by Senators Paul Doyle of Wethersfield and John Kissel of Enfield to exclude violent prisoners from the program, Senator Joe Markey forced the Judiciary Committee to draft and schedule legislation for a public hearing by resorting to a petitioning procedure authorized in the General Assembly’s joint rules.

A bill conceived by Mr. Markley and state Representative Alfred Adnolfi of Cheshire that first proposed to prevent the violent convicts categorized above from participating in the early release program has now been redrafted and resubmitted. Mr. Lawlor recently told the Waterbury Republican American that he "had no problem" accepting a bill adding language to the current legislation clarifying that violent offenders cannot earn credits towards early release. On other occasions he has said that that the early release program would not work if his program allowing credits to the categories of crimes listed by Mr. Markley were to be altered. A citizens’ petition designed to catch the eye of those legislators who, perhaps unwittingly, have facilitated two murders in Connecticut communities may be found here.

A citizens’ petition designed to catch the eye of those legislators who, perhaps unwittingly, have facilitated two murders in Connecticut communities may be found here.

Governance in a Constitutional Republic, particularly when it impacts the safety of citizens, is too important to be left to artful politicians. The petition should be widely circulated and signed. The hearing should be well attended. When good citizens are silent, liberty and safety are put on the auction block.

The Media, Malloy And The Consolidation Of State Agencies

The very title of the story in CTMirror was ominous: “Howls as Malloy tries to shorten leash on watchdogs.”

And in the lede paragraph, a dark joweled Richard Nixon is resurrected from his bed of infamy: “Governor Dannel Malloy is attempting the most dramatic makeover of the state's watchdog agencies since their creation as post-Watergate reforms in the 1970s.”

Watergate redivivus!

The media knows how to raise the roof when its much vaunted independence is threatened. And somewhere in the background a corrupt ex-felon is rolling around in the muck: “But critics wonder why Malloy, a Democrat, is inviting a political backlash with his second move on the watchdogs, whose independence the General Assembly defended when a Republican governor, John G. Rowland, tried to weaken them a decade ago.”

Rowland too? This is serious.

The three putatively “independent” agencies Mr. Malloy is attempting to consolidate under a brand new agency, the Office of Government Accountability or OGA, are the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC), the Office of State Ethics (OSE), and the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC)

In his new budget, Mr. Malloy has called for the elimination of a Corrupticut era provision that shielded the three watchdog agencies from budget cuts by compelling the governor to transmit his unrevised budget requests to the watchdog solicitous General Assembly.

Once the provision is eliminated, critics suppose the governor’s office will be able to control the three agencies' purse strings, thus bringing them to heel whenever the FOIC orders an administrative agency to release to the media public data that might bring a blush to the cheek of some Malloy factotum, or the SEEC uncovers political thuggery in one or another of the state’s urban one-party corruption pots, or the OSE finds that this or that agency is in violation of some inscrutable ethical rule as ambiguous as the Oracle at Delphi.

The OSE recently destroyed a quarter-century's worth of public records detailing the finances of present and former public officials because, said executive director Carol Carson, the agency prior to her arrival had “suffered through well-publicized internal problems” and its records were in disarray. In fact, the operations of the agency were also in disarray. On at least one occasion, the OSE disposed of a case when it lacked a proper quorum to adjudicate, an oversight compliant courts are almost certain to wink at.

Under the old dispensation, the investigative and legal staffs of the oversight agencies are superintended by agency heads answerable to independent citizen commissions that adjudicate elections, ethics and Freedom of Information complaints. Under the Malloy regime, the executive director of the new Office of Government Accountability, appointed by the governor, would be vested with the authority to assign and/or discipline lawyers whose duties might include the investigation of the governor. That reorganization would pretty much turn supposed independent agencies into the governor’s liege lords, subject always to executive whimsy.

Soon after Victims Advocate Michelle Cruz pointed to failings in an Earned Risk Reduction Credits program fashioned by undersecretary for criminal justice policy Michael Lawlor – one of the violent criminals given credits under Mr. Lawlor’s program celebrated his early release by murdering a store clerk in Meriden – her job was posted and she was quickly replaced by a Cook County, Illinois political operative.

This is not a governor who lies down quietly under the lash of media criticism. And critics of his “independent” agency consolidations abound. President of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information James Smith quickly jumped into the flames.

"These proposals, said Mr. Smith, “can only be explained as an effort to gain control over the guarantors of transparency and integrity in government. We ask why the Malloy administration is determined to emasculate the independent watchdogs?"

Vice President of Common Cause Karen Flynn was flummoxed. “It's perplexing," said she. "His recommendations save no money, but they take away the independence of the watchdogs," a chord strummed also by House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero: “There's (sic) only two reasons in my opinion. One is you are trying to save money. That's clearly not the case. The other is control and power. It has to be the latter."

Since Mr. Cafero has recently expressed interest in running for governor, it will be easy for Malloyalist operatives to dismiss his ruminations as political posturing, even when they are reasonable.

As the independence of the three watchdog agencies are drawn within the orbit of powerful politicians, the real losers will be the crowd of petitioners, not always news agencies, gathered near the foot of the throne begging a more powerful and compromised government for simple justice.

Lawlor’s Law

 

The whole point and purpose of the Office of Victim Advocate (OVA) is, as the title suggests, victim advocacy. Any defense lawyer or reporter will tell you that advocacy hurts and involves incalculable risks to the advocate. Such is the case with the OVA, which can most accurately be described as an independent in-house whistleblower operation.

A number of people who showed up on a blustery afternoon outside the Wethersfield Department of Corrections (DOC) on October 16 to protest the immanent firing of Michelle Cruz, Connecticut’s Victim’s Advocate, had use of her services. One of them was Elizabeth Barrett, whose daughter was murdered four years ago. She was accompanied by her husband who, with his close cropped white beard, looked for all the world like Ernest Hemingway.

Mrs. Barrett stepped to the battery of microphones, leaned into them and said in a crisp voice, “Four and a half years ago, we were fortunate enough to meet Michelle Cruz, Connecticut’s Victim’s Advocate. She has sat with us at our meetings with police, advised us of our rights, explained the judicial system, and explained legal terms in a language we could understand. Her empathy and knowledge have been indispensable, which brings me to the reason I’m here today.”

Another Murder, Another "So What?"

State Victim Advocate Michelle Cruz released the statement below following the arrest of Kezlyn Mendez on a charge of murder. It all sounds vaguely familiar and parallels closely a murder in Meriden, an account of which may be found by clicking on the link provided here.

State Victim Advocate Michelle Cruz is appealing once again to the Governor’s Office and the Commissioner of the Department of Correction to immediately suspend the risk reduction earned credit program. “The Office of the Victim Advocate has learned that the defendant arrested for the tragic murder of Luthfur Tarafdar in East Hartford, CT had a lengthy criminal history of violence, unsuccessful probation terms and has been identified by the Department of Correction as an inmate that was released early as a result of the risk reduction earned credit program,”stated Cruz. “This is another case that highlights the need to immediately suspend the risk reduction earned credit program (RREC) until the program can be adequately evaluated to address issues, including the awarding of RREC and compliance with inmates’ offender accountability plans, as well as to ensure that appropriate supervision measures are in place to monitor the masses being released into our communities.”

“At this point, this is about more than the RREC; this is about the manner in which the criminal justice system is responding to repeat violent offenders and those who habitually violate probation,” said Cruz. “Kezlynn Mendez, also known as Willie Batts, had a lengthy criminal history and was charged with violating probation twice, yet still, he was not held accountable for his criminal behavior,” added Cruz.

Kezlynn Mendez was convicted of Robbery 2nd and Assault 3rd on January 18, 2006. He was sentenced to 10 years, suspended after 4 years and 5 years probation. In July of 2010, in addition to new criminal cases, he was arrested and charged with violation of probation. He later admitted to violating probation and was sentenced to 6 years, suspended after 1 year; 2 years probation. He again was arrested for new criminal charges and again charged with violating probation on December 6, 2011. Less than 3 months before his release from the Department of Correction, he admitted to violating that probation and was sentenced to 5 years, suspended after 4 months; 18 months probation. In addition to that 4 month sentence, he received a 30 day sentence for Reckless Driving and a 3 month sentence for Threatening. It is unclear why this defendant’s sentences are reduced as his behavior escalates.

“This defendant has demonstrated his inability to comply with probation as well as his propensity to commit crime. He should have been identified as a high risk offender. How many more innocent people will be victimized before this program’s faults will be addressed?” pleaded Cruz.

Lawlor the Lawgiver

State Senator Len Suzio held a news conference in the Legislative Office Building, sparsely attended by the public but well attended by the state’s media, to call public attention to what he regards as serious failures in Connecticut’s newly adopted and Orwellian named early release Risk Reduction Earned Credits program. The title of the program begs the question -- Risk Reduction for whom?

Certainly IbrahimGhazal’s risk of getting murdered as he was peaceably going about his daily business at an EZ Mart store in Meriden was not reduced after the program was hastily adopted in a legislative session normally devoted to budget fixes. A Democratic dominated General Assembly joined at the hip to the first Democratic governor in more than 20 years, Dannel Malloy, has made it possible for ambitious Democrats to pass hastily contrived bills through a sausage making assembly line that in the past was considerably more thoughtful and deliberative.

Police have arrested Frankie Resto, a prisoner who had been given early release credits under the provisions of the General Assembly’s new law, for the murder of Mr. Ghazal.

In the blink of an eye this session, Democrats were able to abolish the death penalty – by arguing that the prospect of death does not deter capitol felonies. At the time of passage, Connecticut Commentary argued that if capital punishment had no deterrent value at all, no punishment, however minor, could deter crime. At times the Democrats appeared to be arguing for the abolition of punishment as well as capital punishment.

The bill abolishing the death penalty, passed by Democrats over the muted objections of an emasculated Republican minority, applied abolition prospectively. The bill was crafted so as not to affect the Connecticut 11, capitol felons presently awaiting execution on death row.

Thanks to a cowardly Democratic majority in the General Assembly, Connecticut is now prepared to execute 11 men in the absence of a law mandating execution for heinous crimes, oblivious of the natural law informing all jurisprudence, according to which men may not arbitrarily be punished in the absence of a law prescribing punishment: Nulla poena sine lege -- “Where there is no law, there is no transgression” – is, outside of the totalitarian state, a part of the Natural Law that informs Western laws and ethics. The natural law, in its varying permutations, may be found in the Torah, the Sermon on the Mount, the Magna Carta, statutory law and the U.S. Constitution. Alas, Connecticut’s General Assembly and its governor, formerly a prosecutor, are untouched by it.

Mr. Suzio’s too loud objections to the hastily written and poorly applied Risk Reduction Earned Credits program has produced a sour note from Michael Lawlor, who had served in the General Assembly for a quarter century before accepting a well paid position among Malloyalists as the governor’s undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning at the Office of Policy and Management. As co-chair of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Lawlor was practiced at sliding dubious legislation past his Republican comrades on the committee, not always successfully.

“The idea that you could take a tragedy of what happened in Meriden, this murder, and turn it into some sort of a political football is really outrageous,” Lawlor told a reporterfor CTNewsJunkie. “I think it’s extremely irresponsible to capitalize on a tragedy like this.” Mr. Lawlor added that if Mr. Suzio was serious about getting something done, he wouldn’t be holding a press conference, because that’s not how public policy is changed in the Malloy regime.

Mr. Suzio, as well as family victims left in grief by behavior even Mr. Lawlor might consider anti-social, do not agree with that assessment.

Mr. Lawlor argues that under the previous program, Mr. Resto would have been released earlier. Mr. Suzio argues that Mr. Resto was released early under the auspices of the new Risk Reduction Earned Credits program, and the credits that served as his get-out-of-jail-early card should never have been applied in a rigorous and fault free early release program.

“He [Mr. Resto] actually got drunk in prison at one point in time,” Suzio said at his press conference.“He set a fire in a prison, yet he still earned 199 days early release credits?”

To date, 7,589 prisoners, many convicted of violent felonies, have been released early under the provisions of the retroactively applied Risk Reduction Earned Credits program. Where will they be living, asks State Victim Advocate Michelle Cruz? The state, she points out, has only 1180 beds at half way houses and 3,500 behavioral slots available to those who receive early release. Who is supervising their release? Have they been given psychiatric evaluation before release? How are the credits applied?

“Many of the offenders are being granted RREC for simply signing up for a program rather than completing the program. For example,” Ms. Cruz said, “a sex offender who refuses to sign up for sex offender treatment as required, is instead signing up for programs such as study of the Philippines. Once they sign up they are receiving credits to get out early,”

In her research, Ms. Cruz cites inmates denied parole for failure to complete required programs while at the same time earning risk reduction credits for enrolling in programs they do not need. “For example a sex offender who refuses to sign up for sex offender treatment as required, is instead signing up for programs such as study of the Philippines. Once they sign up they are receiving credits to get out early,” said Cruz.

Ms. Cruz has asked the Department of Correction to calculate the recidivism rates of the 7,589 inmates released through the program.

The most recent study of recidivism within the Connecticut Department of Correction, completed in February of 2012 by the State Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Division of the Office of Policy and Management, followed 14,398 male sentenced offenders after they were released or discharged from a prison facility in 2005, providing a five year review of recidivism. The study found that within five years of their release; 79 percent were re-arrested, 69 percent were convicted of a new crime, and 50 percent were returned to prison with a new sentence.

The study also found that; 50 percent of the offender group had served at least one sentence for violating the terms of their probation, 46 percent had served time in prison for a drug charge and 19 percent had served a prior sentence for driving under the influence or alcohol or drugs.

Reviewing the cases of 773 early release inmates returned to custody for either committing a new offense or violation of probation or parole, Ms. Cruz has discovered that many were re-arrested for: Violation of a protective order (felony); Carrying a dangerous weapon (felony); Attempt to commit arson 3rd Degree(felony); Burglary 3rd (felony); Attempt to commit arson 1st degree (felony).

Surely such data would be of interest to legislative Democrats in the General Assembly who may have prematurely approved the Risk Reduction Earned Credits program.

At one point in his news conference, Mr. Suzio hoisted in the air, none too steadily, a bulging file containing the prison discipline records of one of the graduates of the new Risk Reduction Earned Credits program.

Perhaps he should have mailed it to Mr. Lawlor.

Mr. Ghazal’s murder occurred four streets down from Mr. Suzio’s residence in Meriden, and it demonstrates, Mr. Suzio said during his inconvenient press availability, that theRisk Reduction Earned Credits program could use a bit of fine tuning, a suggestion to which the governor and Commissioner of Department of Prisons Leo Arnone so far have turned a deaf ear; now comes Mr. Lawlor sniping that Mr. Suzio is exploiting a murder purely for political purposes.

Pray, was the prospective provision in the death penalty abolition bill not inserted into that piece of legislation for political reasons? And was the abolition bill favored by Democrats and Malloyalists not created by politicians? And may it not be said of that measure that Democrats in the General Assembly, in the course of passing the bill, made rather extravagant appeals to emotional sentiments to insure passage of the legislation? In ordinary political parlance, we call this politicians being politicians.

Mr. Suzio, quite reasonably, is trying to assemble information that will allow him to improve a program hastily pushed through the legislature. So far, he has been met with prevarications, information supplied to him that is at best ambiguous if not misleading, and charges from Mr. Lawlor that he is exploiting for political purposes the pain caused by a criminal whose record WHILE INCARCERATED IN PRISON suggests that he never should have been given early release credits through the General Assembly’s hastily devised – and apparently non-adjustable– risk laden Risk Reduction Earned Credits program.

In passing the program, the General Assembly blew on a dandelion full of seeds that will take root everywhere in Connecticut, not only in Meriden. When a legislature enacts a bill, it must own the real time consequences of the bill. And the media should be asking: Whose risks are reduced by Governor Malloy’s and Mr. Lawlor’s and the Democratic dominated General Assembly’s Risk Reduction Earned Credits program?

But first, they will have to get past Mr. Lawlor’s political spam.