a public defender

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Well, we finally heard from CT’s top prosecutor Kevin Kane. Last week, in a post about Colin McEnroe’s interview with AG Blumenthal, I wondered why there had been silence from Atty. Kane, who, I surmised, would not have been as indulgent as the AG was with the Gov.’s request. (Yeah, that’s one complicated sentence.)

Turns out, it didn’t occur to the Governor to speak to the State’s top prosecutor to see if anything could be done to keep Mr. Pollitt in jail. Fancy that. However, AG Blumenthal remembered that we have a top prosecutor in CT and so he asked Atty. Kane to assist.

Overlooked in that frenzied day of press conferences and hasty legal research was that Kane, a career prosecutor, had quietly refused Blumenthal’s invitation to join him in trying to delay Pollitt’s release.

Kane saw no legal basis for Blumenthal’s motion to confine Pollitt to a mental-health facility or halfway house - the same conclusion that Judge Susan B. Handy would reach publicly hours later in Superior Court in New London.

Not only that, but Atty. Kane saw the Gov.’s request for what it was: a political football being kicked around.

He also questioned why a judge was being made to seemingly take responsibility for an act ordained by law and the passage of time: After 24 years and seven months in prison, Pollitt was due to be released and begin five years of probation.

“The court had no authority to grant any relief under the circumstances, where the defendant had completed the incarceration portion of the sentence,” said Kane, a prosecutor since 1972. Choosing his words carefully, Kane said, “Asking a court to do something a court cannot do puts the court in a very unfair situation.”

Okay, so he chose his words carefully.