Lawlor’s Violent Felonious Graduates

The piling-on began following admissions made by Lisa Wilson Foley that a contract between herself and John Rowland, a radio talk show host following his stint in prison, was fraudulent, and recently Mr. Rowland, a burr in the side of Governor Dannel Malloy, announced he had recorded his last show. On the political stump – the governor, like his beau ideal President Barrack Obama, is rarely off the political stump – Mr. Malloy, along with the usual media attack pack, had called upon WTIC to sever its relations with Mr. Rowland.

Even Mr. Malloy’s Undersecretary of Criminal Justice Michael Lawlor contributed his mite, according to a story in a New Haven paper. One of Mr. Rowland’s programs, Mr. Lawlor pointed out, “included talk about guns, and as a convicted felon, Rowland is ineligible to legally own one.”

Sure, sure. But the law – even the new gun law promulgated and supported by his eminence the Undersecretary of Criminal Justice Lawlor – is a mere inconvenience to felons bent on mayhem such as, to cite only one of 21,929 ex-felons, all graduates of Mr. Lawlor’s get-out-of-jail-early Risk Reduction Earned Credit (RREC) program, Frankie “The Razor” Resto.

Following his release from prison, Mr. Resto, one of the loads of felons given early release credits by Mr. Lawlor, procured a gun – illegally – and traveled to an EZMart in Meriden, where he murdered Ibrahim Ghazal, one of the store’s co-owners. Mr. Resto used hollow nosed bullets to assure fatality and shot Mr. Ghazal in the chest after Mr. Ghazal had obliged him by surrendering the cash in his register.

                                         

Mr. Resto, it turns out, was not the only felon awarded get-out-of-jail-early credits from Mr. Lawlor’s Risk Reduction Earned Credits Program, an Orwellian title designed to fool some of the people all of the time. Mr. Lawlor’s program, smuggled past the legislature in an omnibus implementer bill by the former co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, increases rather than reduces risks to the general public.

Although RREC was designed to tailor release credits to remediation programs involving individual prisoners, Mr. Lawlor approved the retroactively distribution of credits to inmates who had not satisfied program requirements. The bulk of credits were disbursed to felons who could not have benefited from Mr. Lawlor’s program. Republicans have urged many times that violent criminals convicted and sentenced for such crimes as rape, assault and arson (see below) should not be able to participate in Mr. Lawlor’s blood soaked program.

Apparently, Mr. Lawlor and his padrone, Mr. Malloy, are willing to write off as collateral damage the murders committed by Mr. Resto, awarded 199 RREC days credits, and Keslyn Mendez, (AKA) Willie Batts, who murdered a store clerk in Manchester after having been awarded 30 days RREC get-out-of-jail-early credits by Mr. Lawlor.

Until recently, the imperious Mr. Lawlor had been deaf to the pleas of his once fellow legislators. Owing to a stiff resolve on his part, nearly all the data surrounding the misnamed Risk Reaction Earned Credits Program was hidden in the weeds. Some of that information has now surfaced. As a result of the efforts of State Senator Joe Markley and former State Senator Len Suzio, Mr. Lawlor, under the pressure of an FOI complaint, has been forced to disgorge some telling data. Both Mr. Suzio and Mr. Markley have demanded that Mr. Lawlor release all the data relevant to his program -- especially information that touches upon recidivism rates. So far, Mr. Lawlor and Mr. Malloy have been able to shape the public discussion concerning the flawed RREC program which, despite its Orwellian title, will increase risks to public safety.

According to an information sheet released by Mr. Suzio, the data thus far released by Mr. Lawlor under pressure of an FOI request indicates:

·         From 9/1/2011 through 3/4/2014, 3,821.6 years of Early Release Credits were handed out to discharged prisoners.

·         More than 50% of the identified offenses are classified as either violent or serious.

A breakdown of crimes and number of offenses by crime category follows:

Arson: 41

Assault: 1,795

Burglary, Larceny, Robbery: 3,846

Child Pornography or Risk of Injury: 414

Drug related: 3,514

Illegal gun activity: 623

Kidnapping: 21

Murder, Homicide, Manslaughter: 129

Sexual Assault: 385

Violation of Protective or Restraining Order: 723

Prostitution: 98

Violation of parole: 4,730 (any prisoner on parole obviously had been convicted of a more serious crime earlier; the file, however, had only the latest offense for which the prisoner was imprisoned, i.e., violation of parole 53a‐32. Therefore the severity of the prisoner's offenses is not apparent in these records).

Other: 4,795 (260 had no "offense" codes, remainder were not assigned crime category)

Several prisoners received more than 6 years Early Release credits.

The newly acquired data, according to Mr. Suzio, applies only to “discharged” prisoners, not “released” prisoner: “The released group represents another 20,836 prisoners for the same time period. Furthermore, the file did not contain data on convicts remaining in prison, about 16,800 as of February 28, 2014. Thus the number of prisoners participating in the Early Release Program has been approximately 58,000 in the first 2.5 years.”

Connecticut Commentary previously has called upon Mr. Malloy to fire Mr. Lawlor.

On the Road With Blumenthal

Some stories just make your brain pop.

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal was visiting with Gregory and Celeste Fulcher, whose daughter, Erika Robinson, 26, had been slain in a nightclub shooting by Adrian Bennett, 28, aka “Bread.”

Mr. “Bread,” Mr. Fulcher told Mr. Blumenthal, should not have had a gun, and he should not have been on parole: “It’s senseless, he shouldn’t have been out of jail walking the streets as a convicted felon.” Fulcher said of Mr. Bennett. “The system failed us, but I also blame the establishment.”

The “establishment” was the Key Club Cabaret in New Haven, no longer in business. Mr. Bennet is accused of having opened fire into a crowd of people at the club, killing Ms. Robinson and injuring five others. The “system” refers to the legislative, judicial and penology system in Connecticut, as well as a set of default assumptions that consigns the murders of African Americans living in cities to the dark recesses of our minds. What happens in the cities stays in the cities. Crimes outside urban areas in Connecticut quickly catch the attention of the media and politicians, but when an innocent young boy or girl is gunned down in the urban jungle, people nod their heads knowingly and quickly go about their business.

Such assumptions are salt rubbed into the open wound of the Fulchers.  This time, it was their daughter.

Mr. Blumenthal had mentioned Erika Robinson in a floor speech in the U.S. Senate. Good for him. The Fulchers deeply appreciated the notice. The familiarity with violent death in urban areas has bred in us a sort of contempt. It’s an uphill fight for the Fulchers. Forgive them, won’t you? They, like many a father and mother living on the outskirts of urban violence, expected their daughter would be safe. They, like the rest of us, live within the protective castellated walls of our reasonable expectations, one of which Mr. Fulcher stated eloquently in the New Haven Register story: “It’s senseless, he [Mr. “Bread”] shouldn’t have been out of jail walking the streets as a convicted felon.”

At Ms. Bennet’s funeral, a childhood friend of Ms. Robinson’s father, Brian Jenkins, delivered a citation from Connecticut’s General Assembly and then gave vent to long pent up feelings: “Black men need to stand up and be black. Fathers need to stand up and be fathers. We are the black men of the city and it is more than just taking out the garbage and painting the church…The church is filled with old people and the funeral home is filled with young people. I am sick of it.”

Mr. Blumenthal commiserated with the Fulchers. According to an account in the New Haven Register, “Blumenthal said one of the weaknesses in the judicial system is the failure to properly supervise or even confine people who are dangerous.

“‘Every human being, every person in the United States of America, is deserving of protection that our society failed to give to this young woman. It really goes beyond what happened in the bar, in a way it’s an indictment of the system.”

Mr. Blumenthal, for 20 years and more the Attorney General of Connecticut before he was installed in the U.S. Senate, is used to speaking in legalese: “indictment of the system.” It is difficult to break through the ice of such formulations and touch the marrow in the bones, but Mr. Jenkins came very close.

The family of Ibraham Ghazal is still living the Fulcher’s nightmare, months after a felon released early on a new Risk Reduction Earned Credits program developed by Governor Dannel Malloy’s undersecretary for criminal justice policy at the Office of Policy and Management, Michael Lawlor, illegally acquired a gun, entered an EZMart store in Meriden and shot to death co-owner of the store Ibrahim Ghazal after Mr. Ghazal had obligingly handed Frankie “The Razor” Resto the cash in his register.

Because they’ve been through the political process wringer, the Ghazals perhaps understand much better than Mr. Blumenthal the bumps in Connecticut’s justice system. Indeed, Mr. Blumenthal himself has long been a part of the system since 1977 when he was nominated by President Jimmy Carter as U.S. Attorney for the district of Connecticut. He was Attorney General for the state of Connecticut for more than 20 years before he became a U.S. Senator.

So, how did the Ghazal murder shake out? Frankie “The Razor” Resto was a violent criminal, well known to Connecticut prison guards, and he never should have been paroled or released early under Mr. Lawlor’s problem riddled program, which never received the scrutiny it deserved by the General Assembly before it was smuggled through in an omnibus implementer bill. The early release credits in Mr. Lawlor’s program were applied retroactively to prisoners who had not completed the program.

When leading Republicans in the General Assembly forced a belated public hearing and insisted that violent criminals should not be allowed to participate in Mr. Lawlor’s program, their objections were loftily ignored. After Connecticut Victim Advocate Michelle Cruz appeared in public to represent the interests of the Gahazals and began to point out the shortcomings of Mr. Lawlor’s Risk Reduction Earned Credits program, her job was put on the auction block. When a State Senator attempted to receive from Mr. Lawlor data that would show whether or not the early release program beneficially affected recidivism rates, he was given the run around. Neither the media nor the General Assembly has sufficiently examined closely the flaws in Mr. Lawlor’s defective program. All of these matters might have been brought to public notice during Frankie “The Razor” Resto’s murder trial. A public trial might have focused bright light on “the weaknesses in the judicial system” one of which, Mr. Blumenthal told the Fulcher, “is the failure to properly supervise or even confine people who are dangerous” – like “The Razor” and “Bread.”

But – lucky for the system – it will not be “indicted” in a public trial of Mr. Resto. At his own indictment hearing, Mr. Resto loudly proclaimed that he would reject any deal prosecutors would make, choosing instead to go to trial, but he later repented and decided to accept the deal offered to him by “the system” Mr. Blumenthal condemned in his conversation with the Fulner’s. Mr. Blumenthal  has never sat down to commiserate with the Gahazal family or former Victims Advocate Cruz or Republican legislators who have been unsuccessful in persuading the Malloy administration that violent felons such as rapists should not expect get-out-of-jail early credits from Mr. Lawlor. 

Concerning Mr. Resto, it appears that someone made him an offer he could not refuse: There will be no public displays of the serious fault lines in Mr. Lawlor’s defective Risk Reduction Earned Credits program. And thanks to Mr. Lawlor’s reticence, legislative monitors of the program will not be able to judge from the recidivism data he is reluctant to supply to inquiring state senators whether his brainchild actually reduces recidivism rates – which is, Mr. Lawlor has stated elsewhere, the underlining rational for his program.

Lawlor’s Penology And The Corpse At The Hearing

During a public hearing on the state’s new Risk Reduction Earned Credit Program, the informational portion of which was devoted to testimony given by politicians rather than the public, there was a dead body in the room, that of Ibrahim Ghazal, murdered by Frankie “The Razor” Resto shortly after Mr. Resto, a violent criminal, had “earned” early release credits from a program that was the brain child of Mike Lawlor, tapped early in his administration by Governor Dannel Malloy to serve as Under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning.

Some of the public figures, notably among them Mr. Lawlor, danced nimbly around the corpse.

Mr. Lawlor, who has been tinkering with penological reform since his days as co-chair of the Judiciary Committee, was able to put some of his ideas into practice after his installation as Connecticut’s prison commissar.

Mr. Lawlor’s career in this regard has been marked by several successes. An early opponent of capital punishment, Mr. Lawlor was doubtless pleased when Connecticut gave up the barbaric practice of putting to death such multiple murderers as Michael Ross. Mr. Ross’ specialty was raping and strangling young women.

Mr. Lawlor, sitting as co-chair of the Judiciary Committee, argued strenuously during an earlier attempt to abolish the death penalty that capital punishment, encumbered as it was by endless appeals, was rarely applied and urged then Governor Jodi Rell “to reach out to our state's prosecutors and judges before taking action. Ask these front-line professionals their off-the-record opinions on whether anyone will ever be executed in Connecticut. I believe that she will be told what many of us have been told - the Connecticut death penalty is a false promise.”

Mr. Lawlor’s view carried some weight when the death penalty was finally abolished by the Democrat dominated General Assembly during the early years of the Malloy administration. Lacking the courage of its convictions, the General Assembly produced a measure that exempted those currently on death row from its humane gesture.

In 2003, Mr. Lawlor told the New York Times he favored "alternative ways of combating overcrowding, like making it harder to put people back in prison for technical violations of their parole,” which could result in re-incarceration, “and argued that transfers should be a last resort.” In response to prison overcrowding in 2004, Mr. Lawlor argued strenuously against the expansion of prisons. So persuasive was Mr. Lawlor that the bill, co-sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats, passed unanimously in the Senate and received only token opposition in the House. “The key,” Mr. Lawlor said at the time, “is to resist doing the simple thing -dumping a bunch of money into a new prison."

Alas, the best laid plans of mice and men are often torn asunder. Following the horrific home invasion and multiple murder in Cheshire -- in the course of which two paroled inmates raped two family members and murdered three people, a mother and two young daughters, by setting a house on fire -- Mr. Lawlor never-the-less continued to stump for early release: “Some people say let's put them all in jail. OK, fine, but that means dramatically increasing taxes or shutting down a bunch of colleges."

During a special session called to enact stiffer penalties for home invasion in 2008 following the murder by arson in Cheshire, a new law was passed making home invasion a class A felony, and the parole board under whose supervision the two convicted Cheshire murderers were released was reformed: In fact, the parole board was decimated; heads rolled. Mr. Lawlor at the time opposed efforts to pass a three strikes law, which was defeated. Had a three strikes and you’re out law been in place before the Cheshire murders, Connecticut would have been spared the necessity of housing on death row two murderers, both of whom had lengthy prison records.

Mr. Lawlor’s Risk Reduction Earned Credit Program is the crown jewel of his career in penological reform. In effect, the program repeals Mr. Lawlor’s earlier momentary setbacks.

The putative therapeutic benefits of the hastily launched, poorly conceived program had little effect on Frankie “The Razor” Resto. “The Razor,” so called because he had for some years been in the business of shaking down drug dealers with a razor, was given early release credits under Mr. Lawlor’s program -- even though, according to testimony given to the Judiciary Committee by newly elected State Senator Dante Bartolomeo, Mr. Resto fought while in prison with other inmates, dealt drugs, burnt his mattress, was in other ways an incorrigable prisoner, and unfortunately was never subject to the non-existent “Three-Strikes” law so ardently opposed by Mr. Lawlor.

The law establishing early release credits was passed October 1, 2011 and made retroactive to April 1 (no joke) 2006. Since the provisions of the bill were applied retroactively to 7,589 prisoners, many critics of the program contended that the applied credits were both UNDESERVED and unjust.

Having cashed in his credits, Mr. Resto acquired a gun, likely NOT from a gun show or an authorized dealer, and murdered Mr. Ghazal, whose son Fapyo, present at the hearing and also severely beaten in an earlier robbery at a different store, must in the future refer to his father forevermore in the past tense.

Speaking for every victim of Mr. Lawlor’s program, past, present and future, Mr. Ghazal’s son said at the hearing press conference,“This guy, he destroyed our life. He destroyed my mom’s life. He destroyed my life.” But by the time the real public spoke, Mr. Lawlor and his retinue of subalterns had left the hearing room relatively certain that Mr. Lawlor's utopian prison reforms would not be torn asunder by an obliging judiciary committee over which he once presided as co-chairmen.

Courant OK’s Defective Risk Reduction Earned Credits Program

The Hartford Courant has ignored its own admittedly unscientific poll, which asks “Should inmates be able to earn early release with re-entry programs?”

Of the 508 responses received by the paper, 89 percent of respondents answered that question “No.”The number of those answering “Yes” was a slender 11 percent. On the basis of a recent editorial,“Give Inmates A Better Chance On The Outside,” one must assume the Courant editorial page editors fall among the 11 percenters.

Markley Joins Call for Suspension of Controversial Early Release Program

Sen. Joe Markley (R-Southington) has written to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy urging the governor to suspend the state’s new program which enables violent felons to be released early from prison.

In the letter, Sen. Markley cited the recent case involving Frankie Resto, who is charged with the June 27 murder of 70-year-old Meriden small business owner Ibrahim Ghazal. Resto, a violent felon, had been released early from prison under the state’s new Risk Reduction Earned Credit (RREC) program.

“Serious questions about the implementation of the RREC program and the threat to the safety of the public make the situation urgent,”Sen. Markley said. “The non-partisan Office of Victim Advocate agrees that there appear to be major flaws in the program that need to be investigated before another tragedy occurs.”

Sen. Markley said that Resto received jail time in 2007 for convictions stemming from two armed robberies. While behind bars he earned 199 days’ worth of credits toward early release by taking counseling and self-help courses. Without those credits, he would have been locked up until this fall. Sen. Markley noted that despite successfully completing several treatment courses while in prison, Resto earned only 199 of 309 possible early release credits because he was not a model prisoner. Resto was cited in September 2006 for stealing from another prisoner and getting into a fight. He was cited for conspiring to possess contraband in January 2007; assaulting others in October 2007 and May 2008; fighting (again) in July 2008; and being cited for disobedience in February 2009, intoxication in March 2011, and causing a disturbance in September 2011. Resto was identified as a gang member in early 2009 and placed in a special security risk group as a result.

During a 2010 parole hearing, the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles Chairman told Resto, “You’ve got nine disciplinaries ... you set fire to a mattress, you’re a Latin King, you’re not working when you’re on the outside, you’ve got no sponsor. I don’t know, the future don’t look too bright outside for you. You’ve got to change your lifestyle, Mr. Resto. You can’t keep robbing people, you’re robbing people on the street.”

“Failure to be a model prisoner should be enough to trigger a ban of that inmate from earning any credits,” Sen. Markley said. “Yet, this individual, whose history involves violent crimes and who was disciplined further while already in jail, was deemed eligible for 199 days of credits. This law failed the Ghazal family. It is endangering public safety, and action must be taken quickly so that it doesn't fail other families and victims.”

The Department of Correction (DOC) has reported that 7,589 inmates - including Resto - have been released through the RREC program since it began September 1, 2011. Independent State Victim Advocate Michelle Cruz has discovered that many of the offenders are being granted RREC for simplysigning up for a program rather than completing the program. Cruz also found inmates have been 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.

“It has been noted that 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,” Sen. Markley said. “That is why I am urging the governor to suspend the early release program immediately. It is time to put victims first and time to stop coddling violent criminals.”

The following is a partial list of criminal convictions eligible for reduced prison sentences in Connecticut under the early release law:

Rape.
Kidnapping.
Arson.
First-degree manslaughter.
Assault of a pregnant woman.
First-degree assault.
Second-degree strangulation.
First-degree threatening.
Having sex with someone under the age of 13
Assault of a blind or disabled person.
Animal cruelty.

Lawlor Fails to Discriminate

It cannot be a good sign that Michael Lawlor, Governor Dannel Malloy’s undersecretary for criminal justice policy at the Office of Policy and Management, seems incapable of making a proper distinction between violent prisoners under his jurisdiction and non-violent prisoners.

Purely as a practical matter, the distinction was dramatically illustrated when Frankie Resto, released from prison early after having received credits under the General Assembly’s new Risk Reduction Earned Credits program, entered an EZ Mart store in Meriden and shot to death co-owner of the store Ibrahim Ghazal, who handed over the money he demanded to Mr. Resto before he was shot, according to police reports.

Other reports demonstrate that Mr. Resto should not have been a candidate for early release under a flawed program that awards credits to violent criminals. The bill establishing the program was rushed through the legislature during its final hectic days, without the benefit of public hearings and over the voluble objections of Republicans in both chambers.

The chief objection of Republicans as the bill was pushed through the sausage machine during a session that in the past had been utilized to finalize budgets was that the Risk Reduction Earned Credits program could endanger the public welfare because it provided early release to certain violent criminals in prison for having committed such felonies as: the violation of a protective order; carrying a dangerous weapon; attempted arson, a 3rd Degree felony; burglary, a 3rd Degree felony; molestation of children and rape.

Enter Mr. Resto.

A series of reports in the Meriden Record Journal, the newspaper of record in the town in which Mr. Resto murdered Mr. Ghazal, provides according to arrest records several snapshots of the newly released Mr. Resto energetically being himself.

Mr. Resto, nom de guerre “Razor,” was the intended target of a 2006 fatal stabbing, apparently of a drug deal gone wrong. Public records detailing crimes such as these are available to anyone with a computer and a mouse, not excluding those responsible for handing out early release credits under the state’s hastily passed Risk Reduction Earned Credits program. The information – can anyone believe it? --is readily available even to an undersecretary for criminal justice policy at the Office of Policy and Management such as Mr. Lawlor.

However, in recent days the governor’s office has been concerned with the messenger of bad news rather than the predictable consequences of the seriously flawed Risk Reduction Earned Credits program passed by the General Assembly approved by both Mr. Malloy and Mr. Lawlor.

That would be state Senator Len Suzio, who lives in Meriden four streets away from the scene of Mr. Resto’s mayhem.

In reported interviews with several media outlets, Mr. Lawlor has charged that Mr. Suzio has involved himself with family members of the murdered Mr. Ghazal not because the family members – and everyone else in the state -- need his assistance in repairing Gibraltar sized breeches in the new legislation but because Mr. Suzio is a political opportunist, playing fast and loose with emotions rubbed raw by a convicted criminal known for shaking down drug dealers who murdered their father and who was given get-out-of-jail early credits under Mr. Lawlor’s misconceived program.

This guy Suzio, Mr. Lawlor insisted, is a hypocrite… because…

Because Mr. Suzio, WHO FAVORS MR. LAWLOR’S RISK REDUCTION PROGRAM ONLY FOR NON-VIOLENT CRIMINALS,wrote a letter recommending early release under the program for a non-violent criminal convicted of embezzlement. In the course of his letter, Mr. Suzio pointedly made the proper distinction between violent and non-violent criminals: “With the new early release legislation, people who are incarcerated for much more severe crimes such as rape and assault will be able to get an early release for good behavior. I believe it makes more sense for the residents of Connecticut to have non-violent prisoners released early verses those with a violent record.”

Mr. Lawlor has, even now, pointedly ignored the all important distinction. This failure to discriminate between violent and non-violent applicants to the program is at the root of its failure. And Mr. Lawlor in making this point – with considerable help from the architects of the failed Risk Reduction Earned Credits program – is by no means alone.

Andrew Roraback, recently endorsed by the Hartford Courant as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in the 5th District, responded to the preventable murder in Meriden when asked about it by Al Terzi and Laurie Perez on Fox News’ The Real Story (Pertinent remarks at 5:45):

“I objected to this program when it was passed in May of 2011 in the dark of night by a Democratic legislature without the benefit of a public hearing and over the objections of the Commissioner of Corrections who said we should only do an early release program for non-violent offenders. What the governor and the Democrats pushed through to save money at the expense of public safety was an early release program which allowed serial rapists, child molesters, repeat drunk drivers who have killed innocent people to be given good time credit retroactively for five years. And I think everyone knew it was just a matter of time before one of these people who was released before they were supposed to be released did something terrible. And my heart goes out to the family in Meriden who are suffering the consequences of the irresponsible actions taken in the legislation. And I hope that next year, the legislature will see fit to repeal this bill and make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”

And even Mr. Suzio’s Democratic opponent in the upcoming 13th District race has made the same point: “It’s important that we keep our hardened criminals behind bars, and that we also at the same time recognize that non-violent criminals who do have the opportunity for rehabilitation have that through this program.”

So then, in what sense are Mr. Lawlor’s spurious charges against Mr. Suzio not a) political or b) hypocritical?

And whose risks are reduced by allowing violent incarcerated criminals access to a program that should be utilized only by non-violent criminals?

Mr. Malloy, once a prosecutor and a courageous Irishman who fearlessly leaps into controversies in which even angels fear to tread, has so far maintained a discreet distance concerning the pain felt by Mr. Ghazal’s family.

When Mr. Ghazal’s son Fapyo first laid eyes on Mr. Resto at an arraignment in Meriden Superior Court on July 13, he said, “He is a bad guy. He is like a monster. I cannot look into his face,” and of Suzio the hypocrite Fapyo said, “What he tries to do is very good. We will try to work together and change the law.”

When reporters questioned Fapyo at a petition signing at the site of his father’s murder a few days ago, they supposed he spoke haltingly because he was unfamiliar with the American tongue. His real trouble was that he was beaten so savagely while working at another convenience store that the beating left him scared in body and mind.

Still he managed to tell me this story: In Jordan, his father always had spoken in glowing terms of America, so that his dreams colored their own hopes and imaginings.

“We all wanted to come to America, work hard. And now look?”

In “America, America”a book and later a film by Eliza Kazan about his Uncle’s journey to America from Anatolia, the central character speaks for all immigrants when he says, “America is not even a country. It is an emotive idea.”

When Mr. Ghazal’s family was discussing funeral arrangements following his murder, some assumed the patriarch of the family wished to be buried in Jordan. Fapyo interposed and said “No. Dad told me he loved America and he wanted to be buried in America, his new home."

And that is why when a reporter asked Fapyo to step before the mics and answer a few questions, not fifty feet from where his father was fatally shot, among the last words he shared with the reporters were “God bless America."

There are only 6 crimes excluded from the unreconstructed Risk Reduction Earned Credits program, capital murder among them. Sentences for rape, arson, sex with a child under 13, poisoning the water supply as a terrorist act and others are subject to reductions. Mr. Lawlor, it would appear, is lost to any appeals of the heart. But the family whose father was murdered may have better luck appealing to Mr. Malloy’s wife Kathy, who ran a rape crisis center.

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.

The Resto Risk Reduction Release

Meriden falls within state Senator Len Suzio’s bailiwick.

It was there on June 27 that Frankie Resto, recently released from prison under the state’s new and controversial Risk Reduction Earned Credit program, wandered into an EZ Mart store and shot to death Ibraham Ghazal, according to police who later apprehended and arrested Mr. Resto for the murder.

Mr. Resto earned 199 days’ worth of credits toward early release while serving a prison sentence for two prior robberies.

The murder of Ghazal almost immediately called into question both the purpose and the construction of the early release program, which enables violent felons to shorten their prison sentences if they abide by certain administrative rules.

Prison officials and the Malloy administration, as well as legislators who crafted the program, evidentially wished to place in the hands of prison officials additional tools they felt would contribute to reducing risky behavior within the prison, hence the title of the program.

Following the murder of Mr. Ghazal, Mr. Suzio released a letter he sent to Governor Dannel Malloy in the course of which he urges Mr. Malloy to suspend the program:

“I urge you to suspend the state's new Risk Reduction Earned Credit program and to order Department of Correction Commissioner Leo Arnone to withhold all early release credits given to inmates with a history of violent crime pending a review of how the program has been implemented and the public safety protected.”

Mr. Suzio quite reasonably points out that The Risk Reduction Earned Credit program, according to Department of Correction Commissioner Leo Arnone, “is being administered without the requirement for an updated psychiatric examination,” a deficiency that “raises serious questions of public safety as more and more violent Connecticut inmates are getting time taken off their sentences. How can criminals with a history of violent crimes such as rape, arson, and child molestation be allowed early release into the public without the requirement for a current psychiatric examination?”

Almost immediately after the EZ Mart murder, reporters and others noted, as did Mr. Suzio, that Mr. Resto had been released under the auspices of the new program. Had Mr. Resto served his full term, he would not have been present at the EZ Mart on June 27 when the victim, having obliged Mr. Resto by surrendering the money from his register on demand, was never-the-less shot to death, police say, by Mr. Resto.

Had Mr. Resto shot a dozen people, he could not have been sentenced to death in Connecticut, because the General Assembly, dominated by Democrats, had abolished the death penalty during its short session, which in the past had been convened to settle budgetary issues. One of the arguments put forward by anti-death penalty proponents was that the penalty did not deter capital felony crimes. The judicial sausage grinder, it was said, ground so slowly in the case of capital felony crimes that it did not deter people like Mr. Resto from murdering people like Mr. Ghazal.

One wonders whether the provisions of the Risk Reduction Earned Credit program, as well as readjusted sentences that depend on good behavior behind bars, will reduce such crimes as occurred in Meriden. If a criminal knows that his sentence for having committed murder, rape, arson or child molestation could be reduced depending upon his behavior while in prison, would he be more or less likely to commit suchcrimes?

Does the prospect of shorted sentences increase the likelihood of crime by reducing penalties? While the earned credit program may reduce the risk of errant behavior while in prison, and therefore may or may not reduce risk of injury to prisoners and prison staff, cons are very good at conning prison officials and legislators. The risk reduction program, we know of a certainty, did not reduce the risk of death for Mr. Ghazal.

Mr. Suzio’s request is a very modest one: He is simply asking that updated psychiatric examinations should be required before prison officials release another Resto into towns across the state whose citizens have a right to full protection under the laws. Some of those citizens may well vote in the upcoming elections against legislators who spurn their constitutional obligations to protect them from the risks of a poorly drafted and conceived Risk Reduction Earned Credit program.

Mr. Suzio's letter follows:

Governor Malloy,

On June 27 an innocent Meriden store owner was murdered in cold blood. An inmate let out of prison under the "Early Release" law has been charged with the crime. All too often violent criminals are out of jail before their victims leave the hospital. In this case, the victim is dead and his family left with a lifetime of suffering. I urge you to suspend the state's new Risk Reduction Earned Credit program and to order Commissioner Arnone to withhold all early release credits given to inmates with a history of violent crime pending a review of how the program has been implemented and the public safety protected.

The Risk Reduction Earned Credit program enables violent felons to be released early from prison. According to Commissioner Arnone, the program is being administered without the requirement for an updated psychiatric examination. This raises serious questions of public safety as more and more violent Connecticut inmates are getting time taken off their sentences. How can criminals with a history of violent crimes such as rape, arson, and child molestation be allowed early release into the public without the requirement for a current psychiatric examination?

Inmate Frankie Resto, of Meriden, faces murder charges in connection with the June 27 killing of Ibrahim Ghazal in Ghazal’s Meriden EZ Mart store. If Resto had been required to serve the full 75-month sentence for two previous armed robbery convictions, he would have been in prison until October of this year. He was released in April after receiving 199 days of Risk Reduction Earned Credits.

I am seeking to prevent future tragedies like the one we have seen in my hometown of Meriden. Thousands of violent criminals held in Connecticut prisons may be released without psychiatric examination. I am calling on you to suspend this flawed program so that the issue of psychiatric evaluations can be addressed and public safety protected. We must learn a lesson from the murder in Meriden before thousands of other violent criminals are prematurely released into the population.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I know you share my feeling that public safety must be our number one priority.

Sincerely,

Len Suzio

State Senator

The Risky Risk Reduction Earned Credit Program

On July 6, two days after Independence Day, the children of Meriden store owner Ibraham Ghazal were featured in the Meriden Record Journal. Very likely they would have preferred to remain in obscurity, but the murder of their father had thrust notoriety upon them.

A little more than a week earlier, the father of Tamer and Tharwat Ghazal had been shot and killed in the store he owned with a partner by a gunman who, it later was determined, had been a candidate for a Risk Reduction Credit Program passed into law by the General Assembly at the end of its hectic session.

Tamer Ghazal, an attorney from Jordan, was reluctant to talk about the murder. But when he was told by the paper’s reporter that the likely gunman who had killed his father had been released from prison without having served his full sentence for an earlier robbery, he asked, “How did he get out early?”

A bewildered store clerk working the cash register at the EZ Mart during the crime – Mr. Ghazal surrendered the cash on demand but was murdered anyway – observed, “He should not be walking the streets. How can they leave him this way? He is a dangerous man.”

Sentenced for first degree robbery in January 2007 to thirteen years in prison -- suspended after six and a quarter years -- and three years probation, Frankie Resto, later arrested as the gunman, had been released from prison on April 12, seven months before his term was due to expire.

A candidate for the state’s new Risk Reduction Earned Credit Program, Mr. Resto, was given a reduction in his sentence. The legislation that created the program was made retroactive by the Democratic dominated legislature, which means its provision applied to prisoners serving time before the bill’s enactment.

The answer to Mr. Tharwat’s question very likely will not please him. Mr. Resto was let free seven months before his due date for release because the General Assembly – some say to reduce prison costs at a time when the state’s budget is once again in arrears – wrote into law a program that permits violent criminals to shave time off their sentences for good behavior while in prison.

Undersecretary for criminal justice policy at the state Office of Policy and Management Michael Lawlor has said that the new Risk Reduction Earned Credit Program simply moves the date of parole, and he pointed out that not everyone is offered parole, news that is not likely to comfort the children of Mr. Ghazal.

Mr. Resto, said Mr. Lawlor, was flagged as a high-risk inmate and served 91 percent of his sentence. Under the old dispensation, he would have been released earlier: “If we went back to the way it was a year ago, he would have gotten out earlier. We prefer a system where we identify who is a higher risk and they serve a larger portion of their sentence. Had he gotten no credits he would have served three or four months longer. But under the old system, he would have been paroled earlier.” One of the purposes of the new bill, Mr. Lawlor said, was to reduce recidivism, a purpose wasted upon Mr. Resto.

Any connection between recidivism and the state’s new Risk Reduction Earned Credit Program may not be obvious to the children of Mr. Ghazal – or, indeed, anyone else. Is Mr. Lawlor seriously suggesting that a program designed to reduce risks to prison officials posed by the unacceptable behavior of those in prison will also reduce the possibility of repetitive criminal activity when released prisoners are no longer under the jurisdiction of prison administrators? Do the names Hayes and Komisarjevsky ring a bell? Is it possible that Mr. Lawlor and Mr. Malloy, a former prosecutor, do not understand that prisoners are called “cons” for good reason?

Len Suzio, a state Senator whose district includes Meriden, said that the crime “underscores a problem with this new law. How could he have gotten out early? He earned those credits. How could a guy with such a violent record get those credits?”

Mr. Suzio’s view that violent criminals should not be eligible for the program struck a responsive chord with his Democratic opponent in the 13th District Senate race, Dante Bartolomeo, who agreed that “It shouldn’t be used for violent offenders. Clearly this gentleman should not have been released early.”

Perhaps on behalf of the children of the murdered Mr. Ghazal, Ms. Bartolomeo might have a word with Mr. Lawlor, who might just want to plant a word in Governor Dannel Malloy’s ear. The most partisan governor in two decades, Mr. Malloy has not been receptive to suggestions made by Republicans.

A governor intent on giving prison administrators tools he hopes may create a more manageable prison environment never-the-less is constitutionally obligated to protect the public from murderers, rapists and other violent criminals bent on mayhem. The FIRST and most important duty of a government is to protect its citizens from violent predators whose sentences should never have been reduced to accommodate prison officials.