Archive for April 15, 2007

A few updates

Apr 15th

In keeping with my mission statement to make the blog as user-friendly as possible, I’ve added a few things:

Frequently Asked Questions page on the navbar above, where you can ask questions!
A Message Board page, with a permanent link to the message board!
Users can now edit their comments for an hour! (this does require registration, however – which is completely non-intrusive)
Posts of note – I couldn’t get the darn RSS feed in the sidebar to work, so I’ve got the next best thing: Shared Google Reader items. As I find a noteworthy post, I’ll “share” it on Google Reader and it will automatically show up in the sidebar!
Finally, my e-mail address is on the “About” page.

If anyone has any suggestions or things they’d like to see that are featured on other blogs, let me know [threegenerations at gmail dot com] and I’ll try to implement them if feasible. Thanks for reading!

Two more prosecutors testify in dp discretion trial

Apr 15th

Posted by Gideon in ct legal news

2 comments

Somehow I missed the coverage of Thursday’s hearing in the death penalty discretion trial. Two more prosecutors testified.

Tolland County State’s Attorney Matthew Gedansky and Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky were subpoenaed by lawyers for convicted murderer Jessie Campbell III.

Gedansky said he would seek the death penalty if the facts of the case met the state statute. And, he testified, he also would consider input from the victim or victims’ families, the defense, and the strength and circumstances of aggravating and mitigating factors.

Sedensky offered similar testimony, telling Mullarkey that the state statutes are the guidelines.

By my count, that makes 11 out of the 12 prosecutors testifying that they have discretion in applying the death penalty. The only one who categorically stated that he had no discretion was Waterbury State’s Attorney John Connelly.

Previous posts (older to newer):

Technorati Tags: connecticut, death penalty

connecticut

New guestblogger

Apr 15th

Posted by Gideon in Weblogs

2 comments

After months of hounding, the lovely Miranda has finally agreed to accept my invitation to blog here. It’s great to have her on board as a co-blogger, because she is just so darn smart. I look forward to reading her posts and thoughts on topics and in time I hope you will too.

Miranda is also a public defender, but thankfully her sense of humor is better than mine, so you might actually laugh at a few jokes now.

(PS: Yes, I know – it looks like we’re cornering the market on cheesy usernames, but hey, Miranda is better than Schneckloth.)

Edit: Wasn’t Miranda’s occupation (in Sex and the City) a lawyer? Hmm. That was unintentional, I swear.

Studies on efficacy of registries and residency restrictions

Apr 15th

Posted by Gideon in residency restrictions

7 comments

Update: Reader “Ilah” has sent quite a few more my way.

Original post: Helpful reader “Oneandonly” points to two studies that conclude that residency restrictions have no impact on sex offenses. Unfortunately, neither one has a date on it, so I’m not sure how recent they are (In fact, the first one is available only via Google’s cache). Does anyone know of any other studies that are being conducted or have been conducted on the effectiveness of residency restrictions and sex offender registries?

This, I think, is a vital point in the discourse over the need for such measures. If they are found to be beneficial, then the argument against them loses some ground, but if they are found to make no difference or even worsen the situation, then obviously there needs to be a stronger push against them.

If you know of any such studies, leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

Technorati Tags: sex offenders, residency restrictions, effectiveness studies