Sedensky’s Preliminary Report And The Sandy Hook Shroud Of Secrecy

Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky released on Monday a 40 page preliminary report on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. He has promised to release the full report numbering 2,000 pages sometime or other, perhaps in May. Release of the full report has now been twice delayed.

What, some people now are wondering, is the purpose of the preliminary report? There are no shockers in the document. Very little of the released information, now certified as correct by the preliminary report, can be construed as adversely affecting a prosecution, and indeed the preliminary report confirms that prosecutions were unlikely months ago:

“It is the conclusion of this State’s Attorney that the shooter acted alone and was solely criminally responsible for his actions of that day.  Moreover, none of the evidence developed to date demonstrates probable cause to believe that any other person conspired with the shooter to commit these crimes or aided and abetted him in doing so.

“Unless additional–and at this time unanticipated–evidence is developed, there will be no state criminal prosecution as result of these crimes.”

That datum, and other certified information in the preliminary report, might have been useful to the General Assembly that wrote a gun restriction bill in the absence of the authoritative data such a report might contain. That watershed moment passed long ago. The preliminary report is, among other things, Mr. Sedensky’s attempt to shape an understanding of the full report, when it is released.

The issuance of the criminal report has been a long time coming. One underwhelmed former Editorial Page Editor of a prominent Connecticut paper noted after she had read the preliminary report, “Little in this report is new. My prediction: State's attorney Sedensky will redact so much from the final report that it will look like Morse Code. Why has he insisted on secrecy, fought to keep the 911 tapes secret, and taken longer to issue this report than it took the Warren Commission to report on the JFK's murder?”

We are at the point of memorializing the first year anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre. A year is a long time to wait for an authorized report on a mass slaying. Mr. Sedensky has consistently stated that a full and authorized account of the crime has been delayed because of “an ongoing investigation.” Now that the preliminary report has been brought out of the closet, it may appear to some people that Mr. Sedensky’s explanation was a dodge rather than a reason.

Other police spokesmen have said, much earlier in the investigation, that no future prosecutions were to be expected. There are few direct witnesses to the crime. Adam Lanza, the shooter, was a very thorough mass murderer. Mr. Sedensky’s report confirms he was a single shooter. On the face of it, it would seem there never was anyone to investigate. Mr. Lanza committed suicide, removing himself from the possibility of a prosecution interview. His victims have all died.

Governor Dannel Malloy is a former prosecutor, and even he was beginning to show signs of impatience more than a week before the release of Mr. Sedensky’s preliminary report. Mr. Malloy told reporters in Farmington on November 12, “I’m frustrated that the report has not yet been issued.”

The governor was careful to put some distance between himself and Mr. Sedensky. State attorneys, Mr. Malloy pointed out, are attached to the division of criminal justice, an independent executive branch agency. “So that people understand this,” Mr. Malloy said, “they don’t work for me. So I’ll put it a different way: if they did, this report would be out already. I'm anxious to get this report out to the public, out to you folks," Mr.Malloy told the assembled reporters. "That's what I'm anxious about."

The governor, as well as legislators who did not have available to them a preliminary report when they wrote laws putatively designed to forestall future murderous assaults on Connecticut schools, should insist that the reasons for the unaccountable delay of the full report should be included by Mr. Sedensky in the final full report.

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.

Newtown, Who Knew?

Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky has been keeping information concerning the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School close to his vest, and state police spokesman Lieutenant Paul Vance has countless times told everyone in Connecticut why: “There is an ongoing investigation.”

The criminal investigation has been ongoing ever since Adam Lanza, armed to the teeth with weapons he appropriated from his mother, shot his way into the school and murdered 20 young children and 6 staff members. Mr. Lanza also murdered his mother before leaving on his murderous mission.

Right from the get-go, the General Assembly was bum rushed by Governor Dannel Malloyand Democratic legislative leaders into producing a gun restriction bill in the absence of vital information then in the possession of Mr. Sedensky. And whenever Connecticut reporters were so bold as to ask Mr. Vance for information concerning the slayings, they were told they would have to wait for the criminal report because “the criminal investigation was ongoing.”

And ongoing… and ongoing… and ongoing…

After the General Assembly had signed off on a gun bill said to be among the most restrictive in the nation, and after a promised criminal report release date of mid-March had passed, and after a promised release date of mid-June had passed, and after state police had spilled some of the Sandy Hook beans at a conference in New Orleans, grievously disappointing Mr. Malloy, and after Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation had failed to persuade Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring up a much watered down gun restriction bill in the U.S. Senate, and after an arrest warrant was finally teased from the holders of the Sandy Hook secrets, and, most recently, after a crime squad leader in the criminal investigation  appeared in conferences across the fruited plains -- but, significantly, not in Connecticut -- disgorging information that can only be considered compromising to an ongoing investigation, after all this bilge has passed under the noses of Connecticut’s media, some folk in the mainstream media are now beginning to get just a touch antsy.

Why can’t state criminal investigators share with the people in Connecticut – and Sandy Hook – the information they have disclosed in, among other places, Maine, Michigan, Nashville, Tennessee, Dallas Texas and Billings, Montana?

This is more than sad. It is more than an insult to the parents of victims in Sandy Hook.

Governor Malloy wants Newtown to distribute victim funds held in reserve for future contingencies to the parents of children slain in Sandy Hook and close out the funding account. Newtown officials, from the very first, wanted to leave some money in reserve for, as Newtown resident Maryann Murtha put it in a recent letter imploring Mr. Malloy not to disturb decisions made about funding at the local level, “short and long term community needs.”

“And now, at the 11th hour,” Ms. Murtha wrote, “U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal have jumped on the bandwagon, even though their jurisdiction is questionable at best.

“At this point, more than two-thirds of the $11.7 million is going directly to the families of those who died, the two injured and the 12 first-graders who survived the attack on their classrooms. The governor wants the ‘account closed.’ Is this for political gain? How does he know what the timeline should be?”

This is a governor who knows how to get what he wants. And Mr. Malloy does not want the criminal investigation closed, so long as an open investigation remains politically useful.

Danbury State Attorney Sedensky should congratulate himself on his ability to parse words.

Way back in March, attempting to staunch leaks in the media that might have compromised his continuing investigation, Mr. Sedensky issued instructions “that any and all such presentations involving evidence in the criminal investigation be ceased while the investigation is pending and my report is still outstanding.”

Mr. Sedensky has previewed the police presentations given out in several states and is certain that presenters “are not talking about the investigation. They will be talking about logistics and victim control, which is different than talking about details of the investigation.'' And Mr. Malloy has given his imprimatur to the state police: “All they are doing is sharing some of the procedural lessons that were learned that terrible day.”

Neither Mr. Sedensky nor Mr. Malloy has indicated when a similar presentation will be scheduled at the conference center in Hartford. 

Mr. Sedensky and Mr. Malloy, both lawyers, might have come in handy during the High Middle Ages, when theologians were discussing how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.

The legislation inspired by the assault on those poor school children should have followed a complete criminal investigation. A précis of the criminal report could have been made available to the relevant committee chairmen in camera when the General assembly sat, months after the bloody assault in Sandy Hook, to construct legislation designed to prevent such school invasions in the future. But the General Assembly was in a rush to get the cart improperly placed before the horse. During this process, neither God nor all the angels in Heaven were permitted to interfere with the political chest puffing of Connecticut’s two U.S. Senators, the governor, Mr. Sedensky or the state police – some of whom, one hopes, were drafted as unwilling accomplices in the vastly entertaining political show.

Sandy Hook And Common Sense

A recent Courant editorial, “Sandy Hook Panel's Focus Turns From Guns To School Safety,” begins with the following lede: “Officials can turn a school into an armed camp, in an effort to make it safer, with metal detectors, bulletproof glass, armed guards and armed teachers. Or they can take a different approach.”

Naturally, the Courant, which is averse to “armed camps,” prefers a different approach. Schools “can promote good basic building security measures for access and corridor control. They can train faculty and staff to embrace the post-9/11 mantra: If you see something, say something. They can make smaller-scale changes that are easier to implement and pay for, such as more security cameras and, importantly, help for troubled students.”

Will this solution work in Connecticut schools? The obvious corollary question is: Work to do what? We were told by an assortment of politicians days after Adam Lanza shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School that Connecticut and the nation at large would have to craft legislation to prevent such events from happening in the future. All the decision making politicians in Connecticut jumped on that band wagon. Their script appeared to have been written somewhere in central casting, so uniform was it.

The first line in the editorial carries a load of unsupported rhetorical freight. Who are the politicians in Connecticut who said after the assault on the school they wanted to turn all Connecticut schools into “armed camps.” This was a rhetorical spook under the bed from day one. And the other rhetorical spook on a stick was the AR-15 “assault weapon.” An assault weapon is any weapon used successfully in an assault. Lanza arrived at the school armed to the teeth. He left an semi- automatic shot gun – an assault weapon? – in the trunk of his car, shot his way into the school with the AR-15, and committed suicide when armed first responders appeared on the scene.

That is what we THINK happened; we are still awaiting a criminal report from the state police and Danbury State Attorney Stephen Sedensky III, months after we were told it would be available by mid-June. In this particular incident, one wants to know whether “corridor control,” or a staff prepared to “say something” after they’ve seen something, or any of the “smaller-scale changes that are easier to implement and pay for, such as more security cameras and, importantly, help for troubled students,” would have altered the turn of events.

To ask the question is to answer it. These measures may be proper and advisable, but Adam Lanza would have brushed by them quickly during his murderous assault.

Among the first people Lanza shot when he broke into the school was school psychologist Mary Sherlach who, under happier circumstances, would have been pleased to sit down with Lanza to ease his psychological burdens.  On this occasion, she was not a bar to his murderous intentions. And frankly we should be prepared to acknowledge that an “armed camp” might have been an effective preventative – even though we are not prepared to turn every school in the state into am armed camp. The first responders, whose appearance in the school brought a stop to the mayhem, were not armed with Freudian text books, and they were successful in thwarting more slayings BECAUSE they were armed.

Sherlach and Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Hochsprung were the heroes of the day. No song about heroism can be sung loud enough to do them justice. They both put themselves in the line of fire to save their students, and they are rightfully remembered as heroes who, in laying down their lives, showed the greatest love possible. So too with the first responders who put themselves in harm’s way to save the lives of blameless little children: They were all heroes. But the first responders, we ought to remember, were successful BECAUSE they were armed.

According to the editorial, it is good that the commission appointed by Governor Dannel Malloy, a 16-member panel of experts charged with studying “measures to improve school security, mental health services and gun violence prevention,” has taken sufficient time to compile its report, because the state thereby “avoided the panicked response seen in a few parts of the country of arming teachers, which is a potentially greater risk than the one it is supposed to prevent.”

Courant editors should be challenged to cite a serious piece of legislation proposed by anyone in the Connecticut’s General Assembly that would arm teachers.

That has happened elsewhere in the nation. The nation’s federalist structure is such that it allows states to serve as experimental stations, and in time we will see whether arming teachers is a more successful measure in turning away school assaults than, say, the psychological profiling of students.

It’s telling that the paper is lobbying for “sufficient time” so that the panel of experts might create a state-wide camp of psychologists armed with predictive models to prevent future Sandy Hook-like assaults, even as the paper eagerly joined in the PANICKED rush for legislation that preceded the criminal report everyone is still waiting for. An indeterminate date has now been assigned to the release of that report. The Courant permitted itself to wonder in a previous editorial what the hang-up is, since it is unlikely anyone else will be charged in the crime.

The gun legislation so far passed by the General Assembly does not rely on the necessary hard data that would have been available to legislators had a preliminary criminal report been released earlier in camera to legislators who, rushed by political exigencies,  were in the process of creating a comprehensive gun restriction bill. Heeding common sense, the editors at the Courant should have understood early on that the way to build a legislative sand castle in the air is to deprive legislators of the hard data – the ground – that is necessary in all sound legislation.

Release the Criminal Report and Lanza’s Medical Records

State police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance, the keeper of the Sandy Hook secrets, condemned leaks in the investigation of the mass murder of Newtown students, ‘but won’t say they’re acting to root them out,” according to a story in the Journal Inquirer.

“If that law enforcement source does not attribute their name to that information,” Mr. Vance said of an unnamed source in a Hartford Courant story that references the medical records of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, “then that information is suspect.” Indeed, most of the information that has seen its way into print from sources other than Mr. Vance has been questionable, to say the least.

It has fallen to Mr. Vance to make certain that none of the authoritative information included in a twice delayed criminal report comes to light anytime soon.

In the absence of the criminal report, Governor Dannel Malloy and the General Assembly managed to pass a gun regulation bill supported by highly speculative data, although Mr. Vance to date has been careful not to label the legislation “suspect.”

Mr. Vance is nothing if not thorough in the execution of his duties, which no doubt pleases Stephen Sedensky, the state’s attorney for the Danbury Judicial District and the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.

In the absence of definitive information supplied by Mr. Vance and Mr. Sedensky, it is not clear precisely who is being investigated or what criminal charges can possibly be brought against anyone involved in the case: The shooter, Adam Lanza, is dead; so is his mother; so too are all the students who came under fire by the shooter. Criminal investigations in mass murder crimes usually involve the prospect of a trial, which prospect justifies the withholding of information from the general public on the grounds that the premature release of information may jeopardize convictions.

Mr. Sedensky told the JI, “I am concerned any time there’s an unauthorized release or leak of information concerning an investigation. It impedes the investigation and makes it harder for the investigators to do their job, especially if the information may be inaccurate.”

It is astonishing that Mr. Sedensky – in possession of data denied even to legislators writing bills that reasonably should rely upon that information – feels that a report in a newspaper could possibly upset his investigatory applecart.  How would supposed “inaccurate” information in a news story upset investigators who have in their possession objectively verifiable data?

The drip, drip of information from “authorized” sources has been highly selective. Mr. Sedensky and Mr. Vance have custody of objectively verifiable data that may be used to tamp down speculative data in news stories.     

Mr. Sedensky has said his report has been delayed, possibly until the Fall, because police investigators are working on other cases and have other responsibilities. It is unlikely that anyone will the charged in the shooting, Mr. Sedensky said in the JI story.

The Sandy Hook data ought to have been released long ago to legislators who needed it to produce a reasonable gun restriction bill.

That data fund may put some literate reporters in mind of Miss Havisham’s wedding cake. Miss Havisham, a grim old spinster in Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations,” hangs on to her yellowing moth eaten wedding dress and her moldy wedding cake years after the possible profitable use of both has passed. The wedding had passed her by, but the cake remains, an awful testimony to the endurance of shattered expectations.

 

It is not at all unreasonable to demand the release of both the criminal and the medical report – right now. Indeed, some of the parents in Sandy Hook have been demanding the release of both for a long while. It appears that only those demands of the stricken parents that advance the political ambitions of pushy politicians will be acceded to.

 

A Freedom of Information request filed some time ago by AbleChild may possibly bring the Vance-Sedensky wedding cake into public view – provided that the forces of darkness in the Malloy administration are not successful in squelching the eminently reasonable request, a copy of which is provided below.

 

The freedom of information statue, which asserts the right of the people to public information, places on the state the burden of showing that it is in the public’s interest to drop an iron curtain down on information that should readily be made available, and the excuses used to keep public information private in the Adam Lanza case are wearing very thin.

 

 HAND DELIVERY

H. Wayne Carver II, M.D.
Chief Medical Examiner

Office of the Chief Medical Examiner

 11 Shuttle Road

 Farmington, Connecticut 06032

 Re: Request for release of the autopsy, toxicology, and prescription drug history records of

 Adam Lanza

 March 5, 2013

 Dear Dr. Carver:

 Pursuant to Connecticut General Statute Sections § 19a-411 and § 1-200, and § 1-210; Article I, Sections 4 and 5 of the Constitution of the State of Connecticut, Conn. Const. art. I, § 4, § 5; and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, USCA CONST Amend. I, AbleChild, on behalf of itself and petitioners from Newtown, Connecticut (see attached) (hereinafter collectively “the Parties”), respectfully request the immediate release of the complete autopsy report, toxicology report, and prescription drug history possessed by your office for and concerning the decedent Adam Lanza.

 On information and belief, Mr. Lanza’s birthdate is April 22, 1992, and his place of death was Newtown, CT. In particular, the Parties seek all public records and files, as those terms are defined in Conn. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 1-200, concerning or relating to the presence of drugs in Mr. Lanza’s serum and organs and concerning or relating to drugs prescribed to Mr. Lanza. For any tests performed on Mr. Lanza’s body for which results have not yet been produced by the testing entity, the Parties respectfully request that those results be supplied to them when they are produced to your office. The Parties will pay for copies of the requested reports, records and files.

 The Parties have a legitimate interest in the information sought. AbleChild is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that represents and advocates the interests of parents, caregivers, and children. Incorporated in New York in 2003, AbleChild aims to ensure the safety of caregivers when those for whom they give care are diagnosed as mentally ill and are prescribed drug treatments that may induce adverse events that include thoughts of murder, homicide, or suicide.

In fulfillment of its mission within Newtown, Connecticut, and in Connecticut and the nation generally, AbleChild has a legitimate interest in accessing the autopsy, toxicology, and prescription drug records of Adam Lanza so that an evaluation may be made to determine if those drugs contain agents that have been associated with increased thoughts of murder, homicide, and suicide and to determine if such drugs may have contributed in whole or part to his commission of murder and his suicide. The information, professional assessments of it, and 2 resulting recommendations from it shall then be published by AbleChild to parents, caregivers, and the public nationwide, thus better enabling them to work with health care professionals in choosing the best therapies for the treatment of mental problems and to promote more informed debate on measures to stem future incidents of this kind.

Under Connecticut law, requests for autopsy, toxicology, and prescription drug records are obtainable by members of the general public and the media upon a demonstration of “legitimate interest.” Conn. Agencies Regs. § 19a-401-12. Based on the foregoing, there is undoubtedly a legitimate interest for this organization to obtain the requested information. Ablechild functions as public interest group and as a media resource organization. It has a keen interest in discovering evidence of the association between use of psychoactive drug agents and incidents of violence, aggression suicide and murder. It has a keen interest in publishing findings concerning Mr. Lanza’s use of psychoactive drugs, if any, and whether agents in those drugs have been linked to increased thoughts of hostility, aggression, suicidality and murder. Ablechild anticipates that publications of the kind they intend will help improve public awareness and foster more informed public debate and political decision-making concerning how best to stem future incidents of this kind.
 

In Connecticut, “there is an ‘overarching policy’ underlying the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) favoring the disclosure of public records.” Superintendent of Police of City of Bridgeport v. Freedom of Info. Comm'n, 609 A.2d 998, 1000 (Conn. 1992). “[I]t is only in the exceptional case that inspection should be denied.” Meriden Record Co. v. Browning, 6 Conn. Cir. Ct. 633, 637, 294 A.2d 646, 649 (1971) (citing State ex rel. Youmans v. Owens, 137 N.W.2d 470, 475, 139 N.W.2d 241). Such exceptions to disclosure “must be narrowly construed.” Meriden at 626.
 

The party claiming the privilege has the burden of proving the exception's applicability. Wilson v. Freedom of Info. Comm'n, 435 A.2d 353, 357 (Conn. 1980).
 

A legitimate government interest is even more likely to be found for matters that concern serious events of public concern. See Meriden at 636 (citing Rome Sentinel Co. v. Boustedt, 252 N.Y.S.2d 10, 12 (Sup. Ct. 1964)) (finding that, “The public's right to know and be informed on the activities of public figures is practically absolute unless commercialization may be shown.
 

Even the ordinary citizen may be newsworthy under certain circumstances. Whether the event be a calamity or an honor, it may be one in which his neighbors have a legitimate interest”) (internal citations omitted).
 

Likewise, under Article I, Sections 4 and 5 of the Connecticut Constitution there is a right to know indispensable to the public’s ability to question actions of public officials (here, those in government responsible for authorizing distribution and use of drugs that may include hazardous psychoactive agents) that trumps administrative convenience, particularly in contexts where there is no compelling need for confidentiality. See Conn. Const. art. I, § 4 (“Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty”); Conn. Const. art. I, § 5 (“No law shall ever be passed to curtail or restrain the liberty of speech or of the press”); see Maher v. Freedom of Info. Comm'n, 472 A.2d 321, 325 (Conn. 1984) (emphasizing that § 1-210 first reflects “the public’s right to know what its agencies are doing”); see also Woodcock v. Journal Pub. Co., Inc., 230 Conn. 525, 549, 646 A.2d 92, 103 (1994) (finding that while public criticism “can be hard on public officials, it is 3 simply the price that must be paid in order to protect our democracy”); Dow v. New Haven Indep., Inc., 549 A.2d 683, 689 (Super. Ct. 1987) (emphasizing the “profound commitment to freedom of the press,” the court espoused that, “The right to discuss public matters stands in parton the necessity of that right to the operation of a government by the people....It must be kept in mind that criticism of those responsible for government operations must be free, lest criticism of government itself be penalized”) (citing Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 85, 86 S.Ct. 669, [676] (1966).” Brown v. K.N.D. Corporation, 529 A.2d 1292 (Conn. 1987)). State v. McKee, 46 A. 409, 414 (Conn. 1900) (noting that, “The general right to disseminate opinions on all subjects was probably specified mainly to emphasize the strong necessity to a free government of criticism of pu blic men and measures”).
 

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1, also prohibits state action that bars public and media access to information necessary for the effective public evaluation of acts taken by public officials. The Parties have a right to access the autopsy, toxicological, and prescription drug records of Mr. Lanza as members of the press, for each intend to aid the public in comprehending potential causes of Mr. Lanza’s murders and suicide. New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 717, 91 S. Ct. 2140, 2143 (1971) (J. Black concurring) (holding that, “The First Amendment…gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy…The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”); Id. at 724 (J. Douglas concurring) (reminding that, “It is common knowledge that the First Amendment was adopted against the widespread use of the common law of seditious libel to punish the dissemination of material that is embarrassing to the powersthat- be”); Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm'n on Human Relations, 413 U.S. 376, 382, 93 S. Ct. 2553, 2557 (1973) (citing New York Times Co. v. United States, and noting that, “The durability of our system of self-government hinges upon the preservation of these freedoms”).
 

Disclosure is sought without delay. The information is indispensable to political decision making and public debate related to a continuing series of school shootings and acts of mass violence across the country: Dec. 14, 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School; April 2, 2012, Oikos University; February 27, 2012, Chardon High School; May 10, 2011, San Jose State University; January 5, 2011, Millard South High School; April 10, 2009, Henry Ford Community College; April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech University; Oct. 2, 2006, Amish School Shooting (PA); April 20, 1999, Columbine High School; Mar. 24, 1998, Westside Middle School (AR); February 19, 1997, Bethel High School (AK). Many of those and other shootings have been committed by individuals who were medicated with psychoactive drugs. The pattern, potentially repeated here, invites serious inquiry into whether those drugs are in whole or part responsible for affecting changes in perception that may have led to increased thoughts of hostility, aggression, suicidality and murder in the people committing the crimes. Exercise of any check by the public through their elected representatives on actions to be taken will depend very heavily on the extent to which the public is fully informed of the potential causes for these murders.
 

This office may have waived objections for disclosure through communication with the media shortly after the autopsy was performed on Mr. Lanza’s body. In the January 11, 2013 online edition of the Connecticut Post, reporter Michael P. Mayko authored, “M.E.: Lanza’s brain 4 appeared normal.” The article lists several quotes from your office. Specifically, Mr. Mayko quotes you as stating that Mr. Lanza’s brain showed "no tumor ... no gross deformity,” and that, “We measured his head and it fell in the normal range." (This was in response to a question based on suspicions that, based on published photos, Mr. Lanza might have suffered from “Fragile X syndrome” [the most common known genetic cause of autism or autism spectrum disorders], which results in a large forehead or big face).1 Another report of the same interview noted that you mentioned that the results of toxicology tests might provide “potential information” into “the motives of the deadly shooter.” 2 For the foregoing reasons, the Parties respectfully ask that the documents requested be released at the earliest possible moment and in no event later than March 10, 2013, the statutory deadline for response. Conn. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 1-206(a) (“Any denial of the right to inspect or copy records provided for under section 1-210 shall be made to the person requesting such right by the public agency official who has custody or control of the public record, in writing, within four business days of such request”).

Please send the complete autopsy report, toxicology report, and prescription drug histories requested herein for Mr. Lanza to the Parties at the following address:
 

AbleChild
 

Attn: Sheila Matthews-Gallo

19 Washington Avenue
 

Westport, CT 06880

Thank you.
 

Sincerely,
 

Sheila Matthews - Gallo
 

Co-Founder, AbleChild

 

The Sandy Hook Data Dump

After maintaining a four month quarantine on information concerning the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter, Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky dumped some arrest warrant information into Connecticut’s highly speculative media stream. The closely guarded information, released only days before Connecticut’s General Assembly was poised to write bills restricting gun ownership, begs the question: Why now?

When criticized by a few Connecticut reporters and commentators for having withheld information inadvertently released by state police Col. Danny Stebbins during a New Orleans Chiefs of Police conference, investigators suddenly and inexplicably abandoned their often iterated threadbare rational: that releasing information in the arrest warrants would compromise “an active investigation.” They let part of the cat, its nose only, out of the bag.

Apparently the released arrest warrant data was harmless enough to allow Mr. Sedensky to release the data about three months before the criminal investigation will be completed sometime in June.

Journalists, the intended recipients of carefully screened data, do not often enough rely on their best reportorial instincts, which ought to signal to them that artfully edited data is often a craven attempt to slice and dice information for political purposes. If any of the tribunes of the people in Connecticut had asked Governor Dannel Malloy or legislators who need accurate data to write effective laws restricting gun ownership why the data dump -- released months before a criminal investigation is due to be completed but only days before legislators are due to present their final bills -- will not compromise a yet incomplete investigation, the answer to the question is blowing in the wind.

Mr. Sedensky in his media release insisted that “an ongoing and active criminal investigation” to be effective requires the imprisoning of information that may be necessary in an official“ongoing investigation.” The rules of “Professional Responsibility as they apply to prosecutors require that I take steps to not make extra judicial statements that I know or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter… the release of any information could potentially jeopardize a future prosecution if evidence were developed to support one. It is not unusual to develop a viable prosecution late in an investigation when one was not contemplated earlier.”

A wide-awake reporter at the Journal Inquirer asked the governor’s Chief of Staff Mark Ojakian, and through him Governor Dannel Malloy, whether Mr. Stebbens would be penalized in any way for having been responsible for the information leak in New Orleans that found its way into a piece written by Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News.

Surely the leak of such carefully quarantined information had a “substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding,” the fig leaf so often cited by investigators who wished to keep data from legislators contemplating bills restricting Second Amendment rights.

Mr. Ojakian’s response was a barely suppressed yawn: “Those conferences take place for law enforcement officials to share information with each other — confidentially, in private — that might help their investigations. We were satisfied with his [Mr. Stebbins’] explanation."

In a piece written for The Connecticut Law Tribune, criminal defense lawyer Norm Pattis, whose specialty lies in torching prosecutorial pretentions, doubted that further charges are pending and ventured to hope that “someone challenges whether the privileges the state claims justifies this cloak and dagger editing are justified.”

Responding to Mr.Sedensky’s new fig leaf that redacted portions of the released affidavits “would identify persons cooperating with the investigation, thus possibly jeopardizing their personal safety and well-being," Mr. Pattis noted, chortling gently behind his hand, “Somehow, I doubt there will be further charges. I hope someone challenges whether the privileges the state claims justifies this cloak and dagger editing are justified… That is an extraordinary claim. From a distance, it appears that Mr. Lanza acted alone. He is dead. His mother, with whom he lived, is also dead, an apparent victim of her son's rampage. Mr. Lanza can hurt no one any longer…”

Did Mr.Sedensky, alone or in concert with others, sneak one past Superior Court Judge John F.Blawie when he asked for judicial permission to deep-six the redacted information?

“Surprising as it may seem,” Mr. Pattis writes, “the state's filing suggests that there is an active investigation of another defendant in the Newtown shooting case, a witness with such incendiary information that his or her safety would be in jeopardy were it to become public.”

Wracked by what U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal calls the “horror” of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the tortured parents of 26 innocent victims in Newtown must await the lifting of the fig leaf sometime in June, when the final criminal report is released, before their hearts may find rest in the truth that will set them free. In the meantime, they will have to be satisfied with legislation inspired by the rush of circumstances that very likely will not satisfy their curiosity or mitigate their pain.

Psychotropic Drugs, Violent Movies And Videos, The Senator From Tinseltown And Sandy Hook

Following the slaughter of the innocents at Sandy Hook, there was some muttering very early on concerning a possible connection between mass murderer Adam Lanza, his penchant for playing violent video games and the killing of 20 students and 6 faculty members at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Very quickly, public attention became focused, almost fetishistically, on the kinds of weapons Mr. Lanza brought to the school – two semi-automatic pistols, a semi-automatic Bushmaster long rifle and a shotgun that Mr. Lanza left in the trunk of the car he apparently stole from his mother, whom he murdered before leaving for the school.

One supposes Mr. Lanza did not receive permission from his mother to use her weapons to slaughter 26 people, and it seems reasonable to suppose in the absence of a definitive criminal report -- which inconveniently will not be available until after Connecticut’s General Assembly has enacted bills purporting to thwart possible future Sandy Hooks – that Mr. Lanza came by his cache of weapons through illegal means.  State's attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III, who is overseeing the investigation, expects the investigation “will go on for a number of months, but I hope that it can be [finished] within the time frame that I testified to before the Legislature, which is the summer."

In this respect, Mr. Lanza is no different from any criminal who gains unauthorized access to weapons used in any criminal activity. It is the unauthorized use of weapons that is chiefly responsible for the bulk of murders committed with guns in the United States. There is a possible technological solution to the problem of unauthorized gun use. Governor Dannel Malloy, who has been generous in distributing tax dollars to some multi-million dollar firms in Connecticut, so far has not “invested’” any tax dollars to encourage among Connecticut gun manufacturers the production of smart gun technology, which enables the use of a gun only for those designated by the purchaser as authorized users. There are several gun manufacturers in what is still called “the provision state,” so named because revolutionary Connecticut has provided arms to the U.S. government since its founding.

Before leaving for Sandy Hook Elementary, Mr. Lanza took the precaution of destroying the hard drive on his computer. Recent stories indicate that forensic investigators have recovered partial information on two computer drives.  It has been said that Mr. Lanza had spent an inordinate amount of time viewing and playing violent video games. A large cache of such games were found in the home early in the investigation.  

Other notorious mass murderers in recent years also have been frequent viewers of violence. After his arrest for having shot up a movie theatre in Colorado during a showing of a batman film, 24-year-old James Holmes, reportedly “remained in his murderous “Joker” persona” in jail while awaiting arraignment before a judge.

“He thinks he’s acting in a movie,” a prison employee told the Daily News.

Along with other mass murderers, Mr. Homes may – or may not -- have been taking psychotropic drugs.

The scientific research establishing a connection between violence, suicide and the use of psychotropic drugs is so well established that Sen. Owen H. Johnson in March 2000 was induced to submit to the New York legislature Senate Bill 703 which, according to a summary, “… adds a new section to the New York executive law requiring police agencies to report to the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) on certain crimes and suicides committed by a person who is using psychotropic drugs. These crimes include assault, homicide, sex offenses, robbery offenses, firearms and other dangerous weapons offenses, kidnapping and arson.” Unfortunately, the bill was smothered in the crib after it had been referred to the finance committee. It is not known whether Connecticut’s General Assembly is considering such a bill.

The American Psychological Association reports that “The use of psychotropic drugs by adult Americans increased 22 percent from 2001 to 2010, with one in five adults now taking at least one psychotropic medication, according to industry data.”

Often prescribed in the absence proper evaluations by mental health professionals, psychotropic drugs, along with frequent viewing of violent scenes on videos and movies, some observers believe, very well may be a trip wire in mass murder sprees.

Not surprisingly, former Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, now chief lobbyist for the multi-billion dollar motion picture industry, disagrees. Having represented Newtown in the Congress for more than 30 years, Mr. Dodd said in a recent interview that the Sandy Hook slaughter “is much more than an abstraction to me.'' The former senator even now, two months after the event, loses his composure whenever the mass murder is brought to his attention. Even so, business is business: “Movies stimulate, provoke, challenge and educate. The best movies elevate and enrich. They dare us to think differently, to walk uncomfortably in another person's shoes.''

There are lots of empty shoes in Sandy Hook.

How to Write a Dumb Law

The easiest way to write a dumb law is to pass a bill uninformed by certifiable data.

Following the massacre of school students at Sandy Hook Elementary school, U .S. Senator Chris Murphy, newly sworn into the Congress, issued his first media release of the New Year in the course of which he vowed to fight “to strengthen Connecticut’s economy” and “grow jobs in science, technology, manufacturing, and defense.”

And with a nod in the direction of bloodstained Newtown, the junior U.S. Senator from Connecticut pledged “to be a leading voice in the national conversation to end the kind of gun violence that shattered precious young lives and devastated a community in Newtown, Connecticut just three weeks ago.”

On the same day young children who survived the massacre in Sandy Hook attended their first day of school in Monroe, a Hartford paper disclosed that an authoritative report on the mass shooting in Sandy Hook will not be forthcoming anytime soon.

That report – to be issued under the combined aegis of Danbury State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky III, Newtown police, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Connecticut State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – would contain the authoritative data on the basis of which legislators might be able to write laws that could, in Mr. Murphy’s words, “end the kind of gun violence that shattered precious young lives and devastated a community in Newtown, Connecticut just three weeks ago.”

The number of investigatory fingerprints on the upcoming report necessarily will slow the issuance of definitive data. The horror of Sandy Hook is in danger of turning into a sort of Rorschach blot in which every interpretation offers a benefit to the political interpreter. Both Mr. Sedensky and State police authorities have refused to set a date for the finalization of the multi-agency report. Connecticut’s General Assembly has about six months to write preventative legislation. There are some legislators in the General Assembly who think, reasonably enough, that effective legislations should await a final report.

“First the verdict,”says the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass” --“then the trial.” The General Assembly ought not to be an Alice in Wonderland topsy-turvy world in which the foundational data upon which rational legislation must rest follows legislation produced by lawmakers with one foot firmly planted in the clouds.

We should try to retain a sense of modesty and be willing to entertain the thought that no rational or even effective piece of legislation can be extruded from such a senseless multiple murder.

Two Democratic state legislators, Sen. Beth Bye of West Hartford and Rep. Bob Godfrey of Danbury, have a bill in the hopper that would place a tax on bullets. No doubt such a tax would generate yet more revenue in a state hooked on spending that seems incapable of producing a balanced budget, but the tax is impractical and possibly unconstitutional. The additional tax money might or might not be used to pay off state debt, but why should anyone suppose that taxing the lawful purchase of bullets in Connecticut would assist in preventing future mass murders in a state in which enlightened legislators, arguing that capital punishment had little deterrent value, recently abolished a death penalty following a horrific mass murder in Cheshire?

A newspaper in NewYork, driven by the slaughter in Sandy Hook, rushed to publish the names and addresses of legal firearm owners, rather as if they had been child molesters, and the newspaper also published a map showing areas in which gun ownership is heavy or light – a boon, one might reasonably think, to criminals in New York contemplating house robberies. The destruction of privately held firearms in both England and Australia has led to alarming increases in home robberies and assaults, especially among older folk deprived of an effective deterrent.

Before legislators pass any pointless and silly bills seeking to prevent the unpreventable, they should, at the very least, await the multi-agency report on the Sandy Hook Crime and a further study promised by Governor Dannel Malloy.

Any comprehensive report should carefully investigate a possible connection between lawfully prescribed behavior modification medicine and such crimes as occurred in Sandy Hook. There is solid research showing a causal connection between psychiatric medications and mass murders. At least one story about Adam Lanza indicated that he was on medication.

The great German critic Karl Kraus use to say that psychiatry “was the disease it purported to cure,” an exaggeration one may permit to social critics. But the connection between psychotropic drugs and crime detailed by David Kupeliann in a convincing piece in World Net Daily is more than coincidental.

At the very least, the General Assembly should wait upon certifiable facts captured, one hopes, in the promised studies, before it leaps into the void in an effort to show various constituencies that legislatively “something must be done.” Connecticut’s General Assembly not only should think before it leaps; as befits the state’s version of the U.S. Congress, which some have called the greatest deliberative body on earth, it should deliberate openly on matters of pressing importance before it passes pointless legislation.