ct legal news
CT death penalty nothing but arbitrary
Jan 9th
Only today did I stumble across this October 2011 study [PDF] [also available here] on the arbitrariness of the death penalty in CT (via the NYT), which seems to be an update of this 2007 study. Both are by Yale and Stanford lawprof John Donohue, hired by the public defenders office and the attorneys representing death row inmates in the long-ongoing racial disparity litigation here in CT.
The study is remarkable in its breadth and scope; it analyzed 4686 murder cases spanning 34 years to see whether the application of the death penalty was arbitrary in any fashion. The results are telling and a sizeable slap across the face of The Constitution State. The NYT sums up the numbers nicely:
Of those [4686 murders], 205 were death-eligible cases that resulted in some kind of conviction, either through a plea bargain or conviction at trial. The arbitrariness started at the charging level: nearly a third of these death-eligible cases were not charged as capital offenses as they could have been, but as lesser crimes. Sixty-six defendants were convicted of capital murder, 29 went to a hearing for a death sentence, nine death sentences were sustained and one person was executed.
In order to evaluate the arbitrariness of the imposition of the death penalty, Prof. Donohue devised an egregiousness scale and applied it to each case:
It considered four factors: victim suffering (like duration of pain); victim characteristics (like age, vulnerability); defendant’s culpability (motive, intoxication or premeditation); and the number of victims. He enlisted students from two law schools to rate each case (based on fact summaries without revealing the case’s outcome or the race of the defendant or victim) on a scale from 1 to 3 (most egregious) for each of the four factors. The raters also gave each case an overall subjective assessment of egregiousness, from 1 (low) to 5 (high), to ensure that more general reactions could be captured.
The results are either stunning or completely unsurprising, depending on your point of view or naivete. For example, the study completely undermines the most often repeated defense of the death penalty in CT and elsewhere: that it’s reserved for only the “worst of the worst”. As this NYT graphic demonstrates, the study found that only one of the 32 “most egregious” crimes in CT resulted in the imposition of the death penalty. Further, the study found no real disparity in the “egregiousness” of the crimes that resulted in a sentence of LWPOR and the death sentence, thus further underscoring the idea that the death penalty was nothing but arbitrary.
It even supported the vast geographic disparity in Connecticut: a murder in the death penalty capital of CT – Waterbury – was seven times more likely to result in a death sentence than in any other jurisdiction in the State. If the chances of an individual getting a death sentence increase by 700% merely because of the physical location of that crime, then that is the very definition of arbitrary.
The study’s findings also supported those of other nationwide studies that the race of the defendant and the victim play a major role in determining whether the death penalty is imposed:
not only are minority on white murders getting harsher treatment controlling for all of the factors specified above, but this harsher treatment is substantial. Minority on white murders are charged as capital felonies at a roughly 21 or 22 percentage point higher rate (see columns 2, 3, 5, and 6 in row 2 of Table 22) and receive death sentences at a roughly 4 to 8 percentage point higher rate (see columns 2, 3, 5, and 6 in row 2 of Table 23). A sense of the importance of these estimated effects can be gained by comparing these effects against the overall charging and sentencing rates.
For instance, the overall rate of capital charging from the data set of 205 death-eligible cases is roughly 67 percent (as indicated in Table 21). Clearly, a 21 or 22 percentage point increase in charging for a racially defined class of crimes is a notably large number. Similarly, when the overall death sentencing rate in the sample is only 4.4 percent (see Table 21), an elevated death sentencing rate for minority on white crimes on the order of magnitude of 4 to 8 percent is obviously sizeable.
Indeed, the harsher sentencing of minority defendants who kill whites is even greater (proportionally) than the increase in the capital charging rates experienced by this same group. The proportionally greater death sentencing rate suggests that minority on white murders receive harsher treatment not only by virtue of initial prosecutorial decisions to charge death-eligible cases as capital felonies, although this is clearly one component, but also because of subsequent racially biased decisions of prosecutors and/or judges and juries subsequent to the initial charging decision.
The study is also a delightful read because it takes the counter-study of the State’s expert and rips it to shreds. It cuts through the “rhetoric and unfounded speculations” made by the State’s expert and presents the findings of that study as following:
1. There are enormous and unexplained geographic disparities.
2. Death sentences are not confined to the worst murders.
3. There is gender bias in death sentencing.
4. There is racial bias in capital outcomes.
5. There is arbitrariness in the key charging and sentencing decisions of the Connecticut
death penalty system.
That sounds awfully like the State’s expert agrees with the defense expert.
The report concludes as one would expect: with a plea to the court and the legislature to take into account the findings of the study and to do something to fix the problem (or, in my opinion, do away with it entirely). If you read the entire report, it will leave you with no doubt that the death penalty as it stands is unworkable and geographically and racially disparate and that its application is nothing but arbitrary, a clear violation of Furman and the Eight Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. As the legislature heads into its short session in February, it would be wise to look at this report and address the concerns raised by it. Now that that trial is over, perhaps we will talk honestly about the problems created by the death penalty in Connecticut and look seriously to abolition.
Smile, you’re on dashcam!
Jan 9th
Folks, it’s 2012. We should all assume that we’re being videotaped by someone when we’re out in public. Especially if you’re a public servant. Most often, the videotaping is going to be done by the police. They’ve had these nifty things called video cameras mounted on dashboards of police cruisers for, like, ever now. They built an entire show – Cops – around it. I mean, seriously, this isn’t some new invention.
So you’d think that the last person to do something stupid that could be caught on a dashcam would be the officer in whose car that same dashcam was mounted and operating. You’d be so, so wrong:
The video, obtained by Lance Goode and his attorney/public defender as part of discovery purports to show an officer dropping what looks like a bag filled with a white substance and then kicking it out of sight while Goode is inside his home entertaining other officers. Goode is then charged with possession of oxy:
Goode said he was not able to find a valid insurance card so he went looking for it in the residence while [Officer Timothy] Henderson followed. [K-9 Officer Roger] Newton, in the video, circles the car, waving a flashlight inside Goode’s car before returning to his cruiser.
Goode said the officers told him they would tow the vehicle and Goode gave an officer his key. The officers allowed Goode to take his possessions out of the car before they towed it, Goode said.
In the video, Goode opens the trunk and removes several items that he takes into a house, with Henderson following.
Newton, Goode said, can be seen in the video dropping a plastic bag filled with white pills. Newton looks around, Goode said, before kicking the bag behind two trash cans.
A minute or so later, a third cruiser pulls up, at which point Goode is arrested and put into the back of a cruiser.
It took a year, but Goode’s case was nolled and Newton has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.
DOJ finds widespread racial profiling in East Haven
Dec 31st
the land of steady racism
Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote about the town of East Haven, CT hurtling towards “sundown town” status, caused largely by alleged institutional racism and bias towards minorities – lately specifically Latinos. In that post, I mentioned that there was a federal civil rights lawsuit pending and that the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice had opened an investigation into these alleged discriminatory practices of the East Haven Police Department. This past week, the DOJ issued its report in the form of a letter [PDF] sent to the East Haven mayor and boy is it damning (media coverage here).
Some of its key findings:
- The East Haven Police Department (EHPD) conducted disproportionate traffic stops of Latinos. Latinos accounted for 24.8% of the stops in the 4pm-12am shift, which is typically the busiest. The numbers for the other shifts were 17.8% and 14.7%.
- However, comparing the percentage of Latinos stopped to the percentage of Latinos in the population reveals a starker difference. Latinos accounted for 19.9% of all traffic stops, but make up only 8.3% of East Haven drivers (and 15.5% of East Haven and surrounding towns).
In making these stops, the DOJ found that the EHPD targets Latino drivers and employs tactics not used against non-Latinos:
- Officers heavily patrol known Latino areas, lying in wait for people leaving predominantly Latino-oriented businesses.
- Other methods use include following cars until a traffic violation occurs, out-of-state license plates known to be “forged”, citing speeding but writing little to no information about the speeding on the ticket itself.
- Latinos face harsher treatment after being stopped: they are more likely to be arrested and have their cars towed for traffic violations than non-Latinos.
The DOJ further charges that the EHPD haphazardly employes immigration policies against Latino drivers and points out that the EHPD and East Haven have had a long standing problem with policing of minorities, citing a recently concluded federal lawsuit which alleged discrimination against African Americans (Jones v. Town of East Haven, et. al.).
The most shocking thing about all of this (or the least surprising, depending on how naive you are) is that the DOJ got all the above information from the EHPD itself: from 2 years’ worth of police reports and interviews with officers and community members.
The institutional coddling of these discriminatory practices is mind-blowing. From the news report:
East Haven may be unique, if only because of a tangle of politics and the close friendship between East Haven’s Republican mayor, Joseph Maturo Jr. and his chief of police, Leonard Gallo.
Maturo was originally mayor from 1997 to 2007 and he hired Gallo as chief in 1998. But Gallo was put on administrative leave by Maturo’s Democratic successor as mayor, April Capone, in 2010, a result of the allegations of racial profiling and excessive use of force by East Haven Police.
After Maturo won in the November elections, he almost immediately returned Gallo to full duty as chief — an astounding move given the ongoing civil rights and grand jury investigations into police actions during Gallo’s tenure.
And more:
The 23-page report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division cited top police officers for “creating and condoning a hostile and intimidating environment for anyone seeking to provide relevant information in this investigation.”
“We also learned that Chief Gallo had warned staff that the Department of Justice had agreed to provide him with the names of individuals who cooperated with the investigation,” according to the civil rights report. And that, federal officials insisted, was completely and utterly untrue.
How bizarre is this institutional protection? EHPD officers told DOJ officials (that’s the fucking Federal Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, in case we were unclear) that the DOJ officials’ safety could not be guaranteed by the EHPD when they went on ride-alongs. Ponder that for a second.
The DOJ found an abject lack of any internal policing mechanisms and that the EHPD hadn’t ever bothered to compile the statistics to see if racial profiling existed with its department, something that’s required by C.G.S. 54-1m. In addition, the DOJ noted that a large number of entries into the EHPD’s database seemed to be missing ethnicity data or the data seemed to be misreported.
EHPD is at a crossroads: either admit that there are problems and work toward fixing them or deny it all and face lengthy and costly lawsuits brought not only by civilians, but also the Department of Justice. As a new year dawns, one can only hope that concern for the safety of officers and the constitutional rights of its residents rises above deep-seated racism and pride.
A different approach
Nov 22nd
For those of you who have followed the recent history of capital punishment in Connecticut and the struggle over abolition, I will quote a few paragraphs. Tell me if it sounds familiar:
[We] have a fundamental belief in fairness and justice – in swift and certain justice. The death penalty as practiced [here] is neither fair nor just; and it is not swift or certain. It is not applied equally to all. It is a perversion of justice that the single best indicator of who will and will not be executed has nothing to do with the circumstances of a crime or the findings of a jury. The only factor that determines whether someone sentenced to death [here] is actually executed is that they volunteer. The hard truth is that in the [40 odd] years since [we] reinstated the death penalty, it has only been carried out on [one] volunteer who waived [his] right to appeal.
In the years since [then], many judges, district attorneys, legislators, death penalty proponents and opponents, and victims and their families have agreed that [our] system is broken.
But we have done nothing. We have avoided the question.
And during that time, a growing number of states have reconsidered their approach to capital punishment given public concern, evidence of wrongful convictions, the unequal application of the law, the expense of the process and other issues.
It goes on and on. Sadly, while the debates and the struggles and the arguments are the same, the State is not Connecticut, but rather Oregon, and the above is not an excerpt from a speech of Governor Malloy, but rather from a remarkable statement [PDF] made by Governor Kitzhaber in explaining his decision to impose a moratorium on executions in Oregon. Compare the solemn eloquence of Kitzhaber’s statement with the barbaric vengeance that spewed forth from the mouth of Edith Prague. The former is replete with compassion and realism, while the latter is devoid of any intellectual honesty.
Is there any wonder that we still seek and pursue the death penalty here in Connecticut? What more could highlight the arbitrariness of the death penalty when the same argument is utilized by Kitzhaber to justify his moratorium and by the Connecticut Supreme Court to continue to sanction this ghastly punishment [PDF]:
And while it may be convenient to blame lengthy and expensive death penalty trials and appeals on inmates “working the system,” the truth is courts (and society) continue to reinterpret when, how and under what circumstances it is acceptable for the state to kill someone. Over time, those options are narrowing. Courts are applying stricter standards and continually raising the bar for prosecuting death penalty cases. Consider that it was only six years ago that the U.S. Supreme Court reversed itself and held that it is unconstitutional to impose capital punishment on those under the age of 18. For a state intent on maintaining a death penalty, the inevitable result will be bigger questions, fewer options and higher costs.
versus:
We recognize that imposition of new death sentences also has declined substantially over the past decade, from 224 in 2000 to 112 in 2010. Death Penalty Information Center, ‘‘Facts about the Death Penalty,’’ supra, p. 3. Various reasons have been posited for the decline, however, including: the high costs of the death penalty at a time when state budgets are strained from a weak economy; publicity about convictions overturned due to DNA evidence; a significant drop in rates of violent crime and murder; improved legal representation for capital defendants, including the greater use of mitigation specialists; and the increasingly available option for prosecutors to seek life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Although some of these explanations suggest declining public support for the death penalty because it offends contemporary standards of decency and morality, others decidedly do not. Because of the ambiguity underlying the decline in new death sentences, that circumstance does not provide compelling support for abandoning our decisions in Ross and Webb.
The courts and the legislature in Connecticut are engaged in a silly game of kickball and avoidance. We hide behind the cutesy nickname, “the land of steady habits”, when in reality, we are the only state in the entire Northeast to still sanction this punishment. Steady we are, I suppose. Steadily vengeful and regressive.
Says Kitzhaber:
Fourteen years ago, I struggled with the decision to allow an execution to proceed. Over the years I have thought if faced with the same set of circumstances I would make a different decision. That time has come.
The time has come. Who will have the courage to utter these words and take a different approach?
Mi case es su case
Oct 28th
Consider the following scenario: defendant A is arrested for a burglary. Defendant A, in confessing to the crime, implicates defendant B. Defendant A is unable to afford counsel and is represented by the Lawyer A of the public defender’s office. Defendant B is also unable to afford private counsel. Which of the following is the correct step to take regarding the appointment of counsel for Defendant B:
- Appoint a private attorney as a “special public defender/assigned counsel/conflict attorney”.
- Appoint Lawyer B of the same public defender’s office as Lawyer A, and pray that they behave themselves and don’t share information.
If you have your head screwed on right, you’d choose 1. If you were two members of the public defender’s office and 3 judges of the appellate court, you’d choose B.
Don’t believe me? See for yourself. In Anderson v. Comm’r, the appellate court reversed a habeas court’s finding that the representation of two co-defendants by two public defenders of the same office violated the right to conflict-free counsel. That the public defender’s office didn’t see the need to assign one of the co-defendants to a lawyer outside their office is troubling enough, but the Appellate Court’s decision to condone this highly improper, if not unethical practice, is mind-boggling.
The Court writes:
Legally carrying a weapon is a crime
Aug 18th
wait, does that count as Arson?
Look, I dislike guns. I dislike them a lot. I don’t believe that people kill people, rather that guns – the objects from which projectiles are discharged at a high rate of velocity, thereby permitting them to enter the bodies of individuals, causing fatal damage to bodily organs – kill people. I’d rather there weren’t any, or at the very least, we had stringent gun control laws.
But do you know what I dislike more? Stupid laws and even stupider interpretation of laws that criminalize perfectly legal conduct. Somehow, despite my strict personal opposition to guns, it is still legal to carry a licensed firearm in Connecticut. In public. Openly.
Yet, for some reason, the state’s “top criminal justice official” – a made up title if I ever heard one – wouldn’t recommend it. Why, you might logically ask, is it not a good idea? For the same reason that photographers across the country are being arrested for videotaping police encounters with civilians: because no one knows the law (see also this post by Balko on an issue similar to the one in the instant post).
I’m not making this shit up.
Mike Lawlor, already featured in one post today for his sage legal prognostications, offers up another:
“In almost every situation you can imagine this happening in, it qualifies as breach of peace,” he said. “If you walk into a restaurant with a gun it’s almost by definition a breach of peace.”
That results in an arrest and sets in motion a chain of events that usually results in the revocation of an issued pistol permit, he said. And that’s the way it should be, Lawlor said. Anyone who walks into a McDonalds plainly carrying a firearm either intends to alarm people or is irresponsible, he said.
“Almost by definition”? Oh, really? Challenge Accepted! Here‘s the relevant Breach of Peace statute:
State forensic lab loses accreditation
Aug 18th
Following up on the troubles of the State Forensic Science Lab, the Courant is now reporting that the lab has (temporarily) lots its accreditation. More troubling is the fact that the agency that accredits these outfits had threatened to pull that accreditation 6 months ago, but acquiesced to a temporary extension of that accreditation. That time has now run out, but there is another inspection scheduled for September 12:
Michael P. Lawlor, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning, said the lab will be reinspected — the date is tentatively set for Sept. 12 — and he was confident that improvements would result in the lab’s reaccreditation. Lawlor said that the accreditation is voluntary, and that “there is no indication that this will affect pending cases between now and Sept. 12.”
He also goes on to opine (seems to be his favorite hobby these days, see this subsequent post) that the loss of accreditation and the problems at the lab don’t affect criminal cases. I respectfully beg to differ. When some of the problems with the lab involve validation techniques (among many, many other things), I’m pretty certain that there will be some impact on criminal prosecutions, at least in the short-term, bringing the validity of the results reported by the lab into question:
Auditors cited weaknesses in supervision, reporting of case results, evidence control, data security, quality assurance, adherence to standard operating procedures for DNA analyses, and validation techniques for DNA test results, among other issues.
What about that statement gives you confidence that there is nothing wrong with the results reported over the past two years?
If nothing else, this revelation that the accreditation was extended by 6 months will – and should – bring additional scrutiny on criminal cases that were resolved in that period. If such a problem was brewing at the lab, why weren’t the courts and defense counsel alerted to them? Why were convictions allowed to be entered based on DNA evidence that was subject to potential errors?
These are questions that will need to be asked – and answered – long after September 12.
Ayyy!
Aug 16th
making impropriety cool since 1974
It’s prosecutorial misconduct week here at “a public defender” and I’ve finally come across a decision that invokes no other reaction than the aforementioned Fonzie “ayyy!”. In fact, it’s how I imagine the three judges who signed on to the opinion reacting when faced with all the instances of egregious misconduct and yet rendering a decision that – yet again – condoned and sanctioned the behavior.
This time, in State v. Albino, the Appellate Court cannot but agree that the numerous instances of unacceptable behavior, that they gingerly call “improper”, crossed the bounds of acceptable lawyering, yet somehow they find a way to affirm, because the defendant was convicted of murder, after all and he was really, really guilty.
Here’s but a sampling of the key misconduct. From referring to the decedent as a victim and the crime as murder:
The defendant first contends that the prosecutor acted improperly when he ‘‘repeatedly commented on the guilt of [the] defendant and attempted to influence the jury by his persistent use of the terms ‘victim,’ ‘murder,’ and ‘murder weapon’ throughout the trial …’’ The defendant contends that the prosecutor referred to Rivera as the ‘‘victim’’ thirty-one times, referred to his death as ‘‘murder’’ five times, and referred to the firearm as the ‘‘murder weapon’’ eight times during closing argument. He directs us to similar occurrences during the prosecutor’s questioning of trial witnesses where he alleges that the prosecutor referred to Rivera as the ‘‘victim’’ twenty-seven times, referred to his death as ‘‘murder’’ twelve times, and referred to the firearm as the ‘‘murder weapon’’ six times. We agree that in a case such as this, where the defendant has asserted a self-defense claim, it is improper for the prosecutor repeatedly to use the words victim, murder and murder weapon throughout the trial.
To arguing that in order to believe the defendant, the jury would have to find all the witnesses were lying:
Sanctioning misconduct
Aug 15th
In a system that is built on accountability, the punishment for violations of accepted standards is notoriously one-sided. Defendants, almost exclusively, are the ones penalized for failing to conform their behavior to the standardized and socially accepted norms. With good reason, obviously. But the criminal justice system isn’t a one-team sport: there are also judges and prosecutors. And all participants in this game are guilty of misconduct, albeit less frequently. Yet the ratio of transgressions to punishment is inexplicably lopsided when it comes to rule-breaking by officialdom. Courts that find “prosecutorial misconduct impropriety” rarely, if ever, impose punishment.
I wrote almost a month ago about the CT Supreme Court’s extraordinary decision in State v. Patrick Lenarz, in whose case the prosecutor received, read and utilized at trial confidential documents from the defendant to his attorney. The Lenarz case is remarkable not only for the strong language in the decision, but the fact that the Court was so troubled by the actions of the prosecutor that it ordered Lenarz released back in November, after oral argument. In fact, the Court found that the violation by the prosecutor was so egregious that it ordered that the prosecution be dismissed.
But still, this is a prosecutor we’re talking about. The Court doesn’t bother to name the offending prosecutor in its decision, but if you know how to read CT appellate opinions, you know that the last prosecutor listed in the “credits” is usually the prosecutor who handled the matter at the trial court. It is a rather tiresome feature of our appellate courts that they will not hesitate to name defense counsel when evaluating claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, but when it comes to conduct by a prosecutor that is “extremely troubling”, they still cannot bring themselves to put the name down in print, even though the significance of the prosecuting arm of the state using illegal and unethical measures to secure convictions against the citizenry is something far more egregious and dangerous.
But I digress.
State forensic lab under scrutiny
Aug 10th
The Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory, once considered among the best, most independent and most efficient in the country, is now facing some serious scrutiny by the NIJ, an arm of the Feds. Norm Pattis wrote about this two days ago and it got picked up by the Courant yesterday. Some of the problems facing the lab are well known to those dealing with them on a regular basis: they are severely understaffed, have an astronomical backlog of cases and even had to deal with some expired DNA kits over the last two years, which, while they did not lead to false positives, surely took up some time with re-testing.
But this is much worse. Apparently there’s a 160 page report of the audit done by the NIJ which criticizes several aspects of the lab’s operations, including the qualifications of the supervisors and the ability to adequately and accurately process and examine the evidence:
The audits focused on the sections of the lab that deal with convicted-offender databases and DNA testing. State crime labs must adhere to federal standards for DNA testing.
The DNA audit team raised questions about supervision, reporting of case results, evidence control, data security, quality assurance, adherence to standard operating procedures for DNA analyses, and validation techniques for DNA test results, among other issues.
These are significant questions that undermine the reliability of DNA results, which are often used by juries as the be-all and end-all of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. DNA evidence is the gold standard, considered fool-proof and error proof, in the minds of the layperson. To have a report that calls into question basic things like evidence control, quality assurance and even SOP for analyses is troubling, to say the least.
How accurate are the results reported by the lab over the last few years? How many cases did this affect? How many convictions were obtained on the strength of these criticized standards and procedures? The implications are staggering.
The state lab didn’t provide the Courant a copy of the report of the NIJ, but every criminal defense lawyer must send a letter to the lab requesting that unedited copy. What exactly does it say? We need to know that, unfiltered, without the alterations and suggestions of the state.
I know several of the people who work at the state lab and I like most of them. I don’t envy them right now, because it seems that a lot of these problems are brought about by severe underfunding. But whatever the reason, the credibility of the lab and its results is now in question and that’s not a good thing – either for the lab itself – or for the people who have been convicted or are awaiting trial as a result of the lab’s testing.
And if you’re waiting for DNA results in your case, you may have to wait a long, long time. From this graphic in today’s paper edition of the Courant, the backlog for DNA testing and analysis is now 4 years!
Last March, a state police official briefed the Criminal Justice Policy Advisory Board, made up of police, prosecutors and a cross-section of members of the public.
The facts were alarming, [chief of criminal justice planning for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, Mike] Lawlor said: 3,900 “unstarted” forensic cases; 1,800 backlogged firearms cases as of March, up from fewer than 800 in January 2009; statutory deadlines looming in more than 160 felony cases.
“There have been outrageous backlogs with the processing of evidence – DNA, fingerprints, computer hard drives, everything,” Lawlor said. “Police in some cases have had to wait months, sometimes a year or more, for results, and that has affected decisions on arrest and identifying suspects. It’s also delayed trials. It’s been a problem for police and prosecutors statewide.”
Lawlor, ever the prosecutor, forgets one important demographic: the criminal defendant. He who is innocent until proven guilty, but more often than not cannot afford to post bail and thus sits in pre-trial incarceration for months and years pending the outcome of DNA testing. This is as much about solving cold cases and identifying suspects through DNA analysis as it is about the speedy resolution of those cases where people are deprived of their liberty based on questionable policies and procedures at the state lab. If nothing else, we should all start filing motions for bond reduction in cases where DNA analysis is outstanding and will take forever.
An ode to the Kitchens sink: a tragicomedy
Jul 17th
Once upon a time in Connecticut
there was a Court
which, to Constitutional errors,
gave much thought
it matters not, the Court said
if an error wasn’t preserved
if certain conditions are met
we’ll give it the review it deserved
And so the court issued
its seminal holding
in the case of
State v. Monica Golding
The State huffed and puffed
and fumed and schemed
to get the court to ignore these errors
it daily dreamed
In every case
the State cried foul
“but that precise claim wasn’t raised”
it bleated with a scowl
And then the Court changed
as members came and went
the State continued to try
to put in Ms. Golding a dent
And as the years went by
the Court became less receptive
to these pleas of error
the State considered defective
Lo, it finally came to pass
in Kitchens, Akande and Mungroo,
that to instructional error
the Court would now say
“sorry, no can do”
If you do not object
or even stand silently by
as erroneous instructions
the jury must apply
If you do not state
with exacting precision
the specific problems
with the court’s instruction
The court will deem that you have waived
the client’s right
Due Process? Fair trials?
you cannot seek this constitutional might
The court can err
confuse and mislead
but for this Constitutional infirmity
only you will bleed
You must be prescient
You must be attentive
because the Court has become
anal retentive
And now that Ms. Golding’s
been sent to the Kitchens sink
What are we to do?
What are we to think?
Ask for copies
and then ask for time
and if you forget
just remember this rhyme
One thing is certain
One thing is sure
For our clients’ ills
We are the only cure.
And now the prose version for those who either tl;dr-ed the above or who just didn’t understand what the hell it meant:
The C__stit___io_ State
Jul 15th
The judicial branch today announced its list of proposed cuts to services to make the monetary savings required by the Governor’s new budget proposal. As feared, lots of people are going to be laid off, courthouses will close and services will be drastically compromised. You can read the full list of cuts here [PDF] and here‘s a Capitol Watch post on the proposed cuts. I’ve listed the most significant (to me) proposed changes below, but first, a quote from the Chief Justice’s press release [PDF] today:
Our state Constitution in Article I, Section 10 states: “All courts shall be open, and every person, for an injury done to him in his person, property or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law, and right and justice administered without sale, denial or delay.”
…
With these cuts, however, I am not certain that we can adequately meet the requirements of Article I, Section 10. Access will be limited and we also anticipate that the resolution of civil, family, housing and small claims cases will be delayed. The end result is that our ability to administer justice as required by the Constitution may very well be compromised.
Now, onto those cuts. First, four criminal courts will either physically or functionally close:
- Enfield (GA13) will shut down the entire building and transfer criminal cases to Manchester (GA12) and Hartford (GA14).
- Derby (GA5) will move its criminal and motor-vehicle matters to the Milford (GA22/JD) court.
- Bristol (GA17) will move its criminal and motor-vehicle matters to New Britain (GA15).
- Norwalk (GA20) will move its criminal and motor-vehicle matters to the Stamford Judicial District court.
In addition, juvenile court operations in several courts will also close/move: Danbury (moved to Waterbury/Stamford), Rockville (moved to Willimantic/Hartford) and Torrington (moved to Waterbury).
119 Temporary Assistant Clerks (affectionately called “tacks”) will lose their jobs. I believe that’s a large majority, if not, all of them. These are, most often, the clerks you see sitting in courtrooms, taking notes, marking exhibits and doing clerk-y things.
But there’s more dire stuff: the only three operational drug courts in CT: New Haven, Bridgeport and Danielson will close. Drugs courts were introduced as a very useful and effective way to combat the high incidence of minor drug-related offenses. If you ask about its success, YMMV, but undoubtedly it was an attempt to recognize that drug offenders need help and treatment, not incarceration.
The cuts also mean that some important services like “Building Bridges” which helps provide housing for homeless people who can no longer stay in shelters, is completely eliminated.
Finally, in more devastating news for the state’s poor and needy, the amount the Judicial Branch provides to Legal Aid organizations in the State will be reduced by 33%: from $1.5 million to $1million. For those organizations who are constantly struggling to find funding, $500,000 is a lot of money and sadly this only ensures that their ability to provide needed services just got more challenging.
It’s already pretty clear from this brief summary that it will be the poor, underprivileged and needy who will most feel the effects of these cuts and closings. But that’s not the end of it. The public defender’s office also has to reduce its budget by some $4.7 million dollars, which only means layoffs, increased caseloads and – unfortunately – an adverse impact on the ability to effectively represent – yet again – the underprivileged and poor among us. I have no actual details about the public defender cuts, nor would I be stupid enough to actually say anything about that even if I did, so instead I’ll just point you to this piece in the New Britain Herald, which has some information.
Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, it’s a sad day in CT for not only the thousands of employees who stand to lose their livelihoods and who knows what else as a consequence, but also those who rely on the State for the support that they are unable to provide themselves. One can only hope that there’s a way to avoid all of this becoming reality.
This, that and the other
Jun 20th
Here are some stories that are deserving of more attention than 140 characters provides, but not interesting enough to get me to write a whole post about them:
- In what is reminiscent of the plot of an O’Henry short story or an article on snopes.com, a man robs a bank, asking for only $1, so he can be arrested and spend a few years in jail. His logic?
That’s right. James Verone says he has no medical insurance. He has a growth of some sort on his chest, two ruptured disks and a problem with his left foot. He is 59 years old and with no job and a depleted bank account. He thought jail was the best place he could go for medical care and a roof over his head. Verone is hoping for a three-year sentence.
- Connecticut judges agreed to allow cameras in all Judicial District criminal courtrooms starting in January:
Beginning in January, cameras and recording devices will be allowed at criminal court hearings in the state’s 13 judicial districts. Whether a proceeding may be televised or recorded will be up to the discretion of the judge in the courtroom. Cameras will be prohibited from courtrooms in which the proceedings involve a sexual assault or a juvenile defendant.
Connecticut’s Commission on Child Protection – deep in the red – folds and its responsibilities will now be shouldered by the Public Defender’s Office:
The state agency that pays private lawyers to represent poor parents and children in child-protection cases has run up such a gaping deficit and owes the lawyers so much money that the agency has been abolished; its work will be folded into the public defenders’ office starting July 1.
Nearly 200 private lawyers are owed as much as $2.4 million by the Commission on Child Protection – which had overspent its budget by $3.8 million at one point late last year. That was the largest deficit, by percent of budget, of any agency of state government.
Most of the lawyers devote at least 80 percent of their practice to this work, which includes defending parents who face losing custody of their children in neglect cases brought by the Department of Children and Families. The lawyers, who also represent children in court, haven’t been paid since October or November in many cases.
- Yet another story – this time from CA – that reiterates the inordinate cost of the death penalty:
Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then, according to a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty’s costs.
The study’s authors, U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell, also forecast that the tab for maintaining the death penalty will climb to $9 billion by 2030, when San Quentin’s death row will have swollen to well over 1,000.
Among their findings to be published next weekin the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review:
The state’s 714 death row prisoners cost $184 million more per year than those sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A death penalty prosecution costs up to 20 times as much as a life-without-parole case.
The least expensive death penalty trial costs $1.1 million more than the most expensive life-without-parole case.
Jury selection in a capital case runs three to four weeks longer and costs $200,000 more than in life-without-parole cases.
The state pays up to $300,000 for attorneys to represent each capital inmate on appeal.
- Police corruption has “forced” prosecutors in the Bay Area to dismiss over 800 criminal prosecutions in the last year:
Bay Area prosecutors have been forced to dismiss more than 800 criminal cases in the past year because of allegations of police corruption that include selling drug evidence, conducting unlawful searches and conspiring to get men drunk and then arrest them on drunk-driving charges.
In some cases, defense lawyers found that security-camera videos in residential hotels—showing police making drug arrests—apparently contradicted the officers’ sworn statements.
In one case, a suspect was seen in a video of his arrest wearing a different jacket from the one the officers entered into evidence.
Last year, the San Francisco district attorney dismissed about 700 criminal cases after a drug crime-lab worker was accused of stealing evidence. This year, since March, the district attorney has dismissed about 125 cases, mainly felony drug prosecutions.
- An interesting opinion from SCOTUS today, in Turner v. Rogers [pdf], holding that while the Constitution does not guarantee the provision of counsel in civil contempt cases where incarceration is a possibility, the Due Process clause mandates certain procedural safeguards before a person may be imprisoned after being held in contempt.
And you say I don’t post anymore.
Arrest warrant for judge rejected…if it existed in the first place
Mar 29th
Updating the humdinger of a story from last Friday, wherein a State Trooper was allegedly seeking an arrest warrant for a judge who failed to sign an arrest warrant, there are two conflicting sets of stories out today. First, we have the Waterbury Republican-American, which reports that the trooper did indeed submit an arrest warrant application, but it was rejected (by whom, we don’t know), and that now the Chief State’s Attorney’s Office is “reviewing the allegations” that were made in that application:
A state trooper’s arrest warrant application that charges a Bantam Superior Court judge with coercion and hindering an investigation has been rejected, but the allegations it raises have been forwarded to the Chief State’s Attorney’s Office for review. … On Friday, state police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance declined to say why the application was denied or by whom. Vance said the document, stamped in bold with the words “arrest warrant application” at the top, is not considered an application for arrest unless and until it is signed by the investigating trooper and a supervisor.
BUT then we turn to the Register-Citizen, which has a different story. According to the R-C, no warrant was ever submitted by any police agency to any prosecuting authority:
Prosecutor Connelly resigns
Jan 14th
You may or may not have heard, but the State’s Attorney for the Waterbury Judicial District – and the man responsible for sending the most inmates to death row in CT – has just resigned. Justice Richard Palmer, chair of the Criminal Justice Commission, which oversees the State’s Attorneys in CT, issued a statement that Connelly had resigned effective February 1st:
Palmer stated that the resignation follows an inquiry undertaken by the commission into allegations regarding Connelly’s conduct while in office. Palmer further stated that, because the commission’s inquiry involved a personnel matter, and because the allegations have been the subject of an investigation by federal authorities, he was not free to discuss details of those allegations at this time.
You might recall that back in August I posted that Connelly was the subject of a federal investigation into whether he had accepted compensation from his good friend – and defense attorney Martin Minella – in exchange for favorable treatment of Minella’s clients. That Federal investigation is still ongoing. Palmer’s statement is particular noteworthy because it seems that the Commission had conducted its own inquiry into this alleged unethical conduct and was ready to issue some form of punishment. That has now been rendered unnecessary by Connelly’s resignation:
Palmer said that the commission had honored a request that it refrain from engaging in any activities in furtherance of its inquiry that might have impaired or otherwise interfered with the federal investigation. Palmer also said that despite this limitation on the commission’s inquiry, it was prepared to take appropriate action with respect to the allegations against Connelly, but that any such action has been rendered unnecessary by Connelly’s resignation.
Now that may or may not mean anything about the “action” the commission was ready to take, but it certainly does indicate that Connelly was to receive some form of rebuke, separate from the Federal investigation.
The disproportionate number of death sentences originating in Waterbury had been the driving force behind a racial and geographical disparity lawsuit that is still pending.
What this means for the state of the death penalty in Connecticut or for those who were tried by Connelly in capital and non-capital cases is anyone’s guess. Mine is that there will be no consequences and that’s a damn shame.
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