Category Archives: proposed legislation

State to establish dangerous weapon offender registry

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You knew it was going to happen. It was just a matter of time. Doesn’t matter that we weren’t the first state to rush to pass gun control laws, as long as we’re the one with the best laws. And having the best laws means having the toughest laws and having the toughest laws not only means heavy regulation but also By-God-We’re-Going-To-Punish-The-Hell-Out-Of-You.

And so here we are. Along with bans on high capacity magazines and universal background checks, we also have “the nation’s first statewide dangerous weapon offender registry”. An idea that Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney has proposed before (here‘s a 2011 Courant article on that proposal), the registry requires that:

[I]ndividuals must register with DESPP if they have been convicted of any of more than 40 enumerated weapons offenses (mostly gun offenses) or another felony that the court makes a finding involved the use or threatened use of a deadly weapon.

Individuals must register with DESPP for a total of five years after their release into the community. During that time they must keep their registration address current at all times, and they must check in once per year, on the anniversary of their release, with local law enforcement in the town where they currently reside. Unlike Megan’s List, this registry will not be public. Instead, it will be available to law enforcement only.

In addition, this mega compromise super-awesome-best-in-the-world-bill naturally also “significantly increases penalties for many firearms trafficking and illegal possession offenses.” Of course it does.

These provisions will do nothing to stop another Adam Lanza. These provisions won’t affect James Holmes.

What they will do is further oppress an already oppressed segment of society. Now poor black and Hispanic defendants will have two more procedural hurdles to jump through and more opportunities to commit crimes.

So why not just take everyone who’s committed a crime and make them register somewhere with some agency. And we’ll make them undergo some rigorous testing when they’re released, so we can probe them and see if they’re doing the right thing. Maybe we can call it, hmm, let’s see, probe…probate…probation! Yes. Probation. And when they’re on probation they have to report to an officer of some sort. Someone who keeps tabs on them. Let’s see. What shall we call this Officer of Probation? Okay, nevermind, we can come back to that.

What’s that? We do that already? Oh. But what’s one more registration requirement, right? I mean, all of our other registries are working so wel-oh, wait.

—

Also included in the bill are a bunch of mental health provisions. Because now apparently the mantra is that people don’t kill people, but mentally ill people use guns to kill people. Whatever.

If you accept that flawed premise as the root cause of all gun-related evil (as has been bandied about by many since the mass shootings of the past few years); that these are mentally ill people who are committing crimes and of course no sane law abiding citizen would ever use a gun in an unlawful manner (of course they wouldn’t; once they do they aren’t law abiding anymore), then the question becomes, what to do with those that are mentally ill and thus predisposed to crime? Or are criminals mentally ill because only mentally ill people commit crimes with guns? And if we have such a large gun problem, that means that there are many people who are mentally ill, correct?

The truth, of course, is that some mentally ill people commit crimes, some sane people commit crimes, some mentally ill people don’t commit crimes and some sane people don’t commit crimes. What’s also true is that our prisons are filled with people who did commit crimes because they are mentally ill and there are zero options available to treat and assist them and prevent them from re-offending. Putting them on a fucking list isn’t going to solve anything.

So what’s plainly missing from these “mental health provisions” is any mention of mental illness among the prison population and the taking of any steps to address that huge neglected problem. At least a quarter of all inmates have mental illnesses and in a society where there are fewer and fewer resources being assigned to diagnose and treat those mental illnesses, any bill that proposes to make mental health reforms but doesn’t so much as mention the incarcerated population (in a bill that is all about criminals and criminalizing conduct, no less, wtf, is this crazy season?) is a joke.

WAIT. It’s April Fool’s Day today, right? That’s got to be it. That’s the only explanation. Whew. Good one, Connecticut legislature.

Mandatory pro bono: silly season’s here again

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January every two years is a goldmine for long-time bloggers and part-time comics like me. It provides just the sort of low-hanging fruit that I need to get the few remaining brain cells up off the couch and into some sort of athletic program.

I’m talking about the long session of the state legislature, which is sure to provide many moments of facepalming (kids still do that, right?) and with every new session comes a mighty challenger attempting to meet and surpass the high standard set by Senator Witkos.

This year, we have one such strong contender very early one: Rep. Christopher Davis of the 57th District thinks that it’s a splendid idea if any attorney who makes more than 50% of their annual income from state funds should be required to do 40 hours of pro bono service. The entirety of the bill is:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:  That the general statutes be amended to require that any person who is engaged in the practice of law and receives fifty per cent or more of his or her annual income from state funds shall complete not less than forty hours of pro bono legal work during the calendar year in which the income is earned.

I’ll tell you what is a great idea: pro bono. We should have lawyers doing more pro bono work; there is a glut of indigent defendants and plaintiffs who get screwed because they don’t have legal representation.

I’ll tell you what is a stupid idea: this bill. You know who’d be covered by this bill? Me. Every other public defender. Lots of private attorneys who represent criminal defendants as special public defenders or “assigned counsel”. Also: every prosecutor in this state. Would judges be covered? Perhaps. And he wants us to do 40 hours of mandatory pro bono work.

Putting aside the perhaps untrue joke that we criminal defense lawyers do pro bono work already (because our clients don’t pay us and those that do get paid by clients hardly ever get paid), there are several other problems with such an “idea”. For instance, could I stick to doing criminal work for free? Or would I be forced to learn and take up the practice of property law. Perhaps I could do a few closings a year or really slowly write a will or three (after all, is the State going to also monitor my 40 hours of pro bono?)

Who’s going to pay for my malpractice insurance? Oh, and who’s going to help me when I get fired for violating C.G.S 51-293(d)? Not familiar with 51-293(d)? No worries. That’s what I’m here for. 51-293(d) simply says:

(d) Each public defender, assistant public defender and deputy assistant public defender shall devote his full time to the duties of his office, shall not engage in the private practice of law, and shall not be a partner, member or associate of a law firm.

Oops. Rep. Davis would make lawbreakers of us all. Sorry, Rep. Davis, but I break the law on my own terms, not on the law’s terms.

That this is very low-hanging fruit is not in dispute; that this bill probably goes no further than one man’s fancy and one blogger’s delight is pretty set in stone, but the fact that it was actually proposed by someone who is elected to be our representative in the legislative body should give pause. And perhaps when we pause, we should think. It’ll be more than Rep. Davis did.

 

DNA exonerates another in CT; mis-ID the culprit

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On Monday, Hubert Thompson walked out of Hartford Superior Court a free man. He felt the sun hit his face, breathed fresh air and went where the hell he damn pleased. He had just been granted a new trial after serving well over half a decade in prison for a rape he didn’t commit.

After DNA taken from the victim was discovered to still exist in a vault somewhere, his attorney sought to have it tested. The results excluded him as the source of the DNA and implicated another man. On Monday, his motion for a new trial was granted [I don't have a copy of the actual motion, but if you go that page, you can see a copy of the order page, which has some details on it].

[I've been sitting on this post for 3 days now, since there was absolutely no media coverage whatsoever and I didn't want to find myself in the enviable position of being the source of a news story that frankly half a dozen "news" organizations shouldn't gotten their hands on this week. That it took 4 days before the intrepid folks at CT News Junkie tracked down this story independently speaks volumes to the focus of the "mainstream" news outlets, which are quick to splash sensationalist headlines of people's arrests but reluctant to find out about real stories of injustice even when repeatedly informed of them. This is why independent news outlets like CTNJ and New Haven Independent have the drop on most traditional news media.]

How did Mr. Thompson get arrested, charged and convicted, you might ask, despite the title of this post? A faulty identification by the victim, ‘natch. Just in time, too, as the legislature today holds a public hearing on another eyewitness identification bill that would improve upon the one passed last year. But it also comes at the right time in the context of the death penalty debate, serving to remind us and our legislators that even here in the land of steady habits, we are not perfect. We make mistakes and one day, these mistakes are going to converge in a death penalty case. That we’ve been lucky so far is no reason to maintain faith in the infallibility of our particular death penalty scheme.

Thompson was convicted in 1998 of a rape and kidnapping that occurred in 1994. He was sentenced to serve 12 years in prison. At the time there was no usable DNA evidence, but the victim identified Thompson as the perpetrator.

Just this month, the State lab finished testing on the victim’s underwear to find that it excluded Thompson and implicated another man. Which is fantastic for Mr. Thompson, but just imagine, for a second that there was no testable DNA remaining. He’d still know he was innocent, but no one would believe him. He’d probably serve 12 years and be left to the ravages of the system with no way of proving his innocence.

There are people like that in our prisons. People who are innocent, but have no way of proving it. And a large number of them are convicted based solely on eyewitness testimony. Why do we continue to rely on this faulty mode of evidence? Why do juries? People: if you’re reading this and you’re on a jury, be extremely skeptical. There may be no white knight in 5, 10, 15 years to save an innocent man. Maybe it’s time we all started requesting instructions on the dangerousness of eyewitness testimony. We should ask that juries be instructed that 75% of wrongful convictions involved an identification of the exonerated. Something has to be done.

Just not what State Rep. Hewett wants:

However, Rep. Ernest Hewett, D- New London, said Thompson’s case lends support to a different proposal he’s pushed in the past. Hewett wants to allow the pre-conviction collection of DNA data at the time of a felony arrest.  “Can you imagine if we increased our database to arrestee DNA, how many people we’d get? They’re just walking the streets,” he said. “Those people that are running wild out there, continuing to commit crimes, their profile would be in our database.”

This, apparently, is his pet project. I’ve written in the past about how this would run afoul not only of our basic Constitutional rights, but also the principles underlying those rights and would only serve to push us closer to war with Oceania [and a debate on this bill last year produced, in my estimation, the "Best. Quote. Ever"].

Hewett, as you can see from prior posts, is prone to saying things that make little sense. He says that Hubert Thompson’s DNA exoneration, – and for that to work, they’d had to have DNA from the victim, the suspect and Mr. Thompson – this particular case, lends support to the idea that we should take DNA from people when they’re arrested. Apparently he missed the part where they didn’t test the DNA in 1998 because there wasn’t any usable DNA in the rape kit, not because they didn’t have Mr. Thompson’s DNA or that of the real suspect.

As time went by, extraction methods and protocols improved, allowing the lab to extract DNA from samples previously thought to be unusable. It’s that advancement in technology that permitted the exoneration of Mr. Thompson, not him suddenly deciding 5 years into a 12 year sentence that “hey, you know, maybe I should start working on this whole ‘getting out of serving time for a crime I didn’t commit’ thing”.

We’re all allowed to have positions on things and our pet projects – God knows I have so many – but can’t we at least expect our elected officials to be able to understand, articulate and properly apply theirs?

 

 

Prison isn’t what you think it is, and other death penalty half-truths

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The judiciary committee’s public hearing on the repeal of the death penalty in Connecticut lasted well over 14 hours yesterday, with both sides making impassioned pleas for their respective positions. All the usual arguments were bandied about: it’s not a deterrent, yes it is; it costs money; it’s worth it and so on. So one would think that with a debate so well worn out, there wouldn’t be any surprising moments in the discussion, but oh my, where do I start?

[Before I do start, however, I do want to point out that it seemed to me that unlike in years past, the number of supporters of repeal significantly outnumbered the opponents of repeal. Is this indicative of anything? I'm not sure, but it's worth noting.]

As the day progressed, one common theme seemed to emerge among the opponents of repeal, and since it’s one that’s blatantly wrong and designed to invoke false outrage among people it’s worth tackling head on. The refrain was that prison is a dandy place. A place where inmates “have everything going for them” (yes, that’s an approximation of an actual quote by a State Representative), where they get “all the rights and responsibilities” of other inmates. Where they have a TV – albeit 9 inches and only 1 or 2 channels. Where they can spend 6-7 hours a day outside their cages. Sounds heavenly.

So let’s get one thing clear: bullshit. Prison is a terrible, terrible place. It’s not Club Fed. It’s not your mother’s basement. It’s not the local Starbucks. It’s a fucking prison.

You know what happens in a prison? People are locked up. In tiny cells. With a big metal door that other people control. They also control when you eat, when you walk, when you take a shower, when you sleep, who you talk to, how long you talk to them, what you can watch, what you can read and whether that medical condition of yours deserves treatment.

And you are so controlled, inside drab, grey, concrete, barricaded walls for days, weeks, months, years, decades and in some cases, for the rest of your life. To suggest that allowing people from death row out into some form of general population is a gift that they do not deserve betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what prison is. Either that or it’s an intentional lie meant to rouse the passions of the masses, in which case, if you’re stupid enough to believe it, you deserve what  you get.

It’s one thing to go look at conditions of confinement when you’re with a touring party and a show is being put on just for you. It’s quite another to sit there, day in and day out, left with nothing but the sound of your own slowly deteriorating mind.

And let’s clear up another misconception: this bill would change the penalty of death to – and listen carefully now – life in prison. without. the possibility. of release.

It should be clear enough, but since a surprising number of people are poor at reading comprehension, I’ll state it in even simpler terms: life without the possibility of release means that there is no chance, none whatsoever, that those individuals will ever be released from prison, even if they live to the ripe old age of 5,328. In yet other words, they will die in prison. There’s no if, but or parole about it. So stop with the nonsense.

—

There is another segment of the population that seems to have deliberately closed its ears to an honest and accurate debate on the death penalty: our purveyors of fact, the doyens of social responsibility and honorable men, all – news media.

There are two things the media loves to trumpet in the wake of any death penalty debate: an incomplete statistic of the support of the death penalty and the views of one particular high-profile victim’s family.

It is true that, when asked if they support the death penalty, 67% of respondents said yes. So the headline becomes 67% support the death penalty. The headline is half-true and would be fully true if the words (in a vacuum) were added.

Because, as is often the case, the truth lies deeper (or in the case of this poll, in the next sentence): that when given the choice between the death penalty and life without the possibility of release, only 48% support the death penalty, while 43% oppose it with 9% not having a clue. As anyone who can reasonably guess at the meaning of words might tell you, 48% does not a majority make.

But try and find that in the news piece I linked to above. Or in any other. I’m not saying this as a supporter of abolition. I’m saying this as someone who wants to see an honest, informed debate. What other reason can there be to ignore this vital statistic than the fact that it doesn’t fit within the pre-determined story?

—-

In the world of victims in Connecticut, in the context of the death penalty debate, there are two types: the Petits and everyone else. The Petits who, as is their right, have been vocal in their opposition to the repeal of the death penalty get a mention in every news story about yesterday’s public hearing despite not being present to testify.  Those on the other side are lumped together – if they get a mention at all – in an amorphous blog of nameless, colorless, existence-less, generic terms like “other supporters of repeal”.

No, sorry, that’s just disrespectful. The Petits’ position is just as valid as that of Dawn Mancarella or Elizabeth Brancato whose mothers were murdered, or Catherine Ednie, whose brother and four of his friends were murdered, or Cindy Siclari, whose sister-in-law was raped and murdered, or Jane Caron, whose aunt was murdered in the course of a robbery, or former Hartford Police Chief Daryl Roberts, testifying both as law enforcement and as someone whose cousin was murdered, or Timothy Anderson, whose aunt was murdered [and who is interesting for more than that reason, but more on that in a bit]. You can read all the submitted testimony here.

These people – and their voices and opinions – should be part of the debate just as much as those on the other side.

—-

There was a moment, when Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane, a man who is respected by most on both sides of the bar, started speaking in opposition to the death penalty, when he asked the members of the committee, just like he asks juries, to vote their conscience. He asked them to recognize that this is a gut-wrenching issue, that this will be the most important decision of their lives and to search within their souls and vote according to their beliefs and their convictions.

He’s right, you know. Underneath it all, sentencing a fellow human being to death, no matter whether their actions justified it, is a deeply moral issue.

And we ask our fellow, average, everyday citizens to do this on a regular basis. We ask you and me to make the decision to another’s life as if it were a decision about which car to buy. We place this heavy moral burden on people who do not ask for, nor want this responsibility. If it is such a monumental decision and causes so much anguish for those who are elected to make these decisions, how can we, in good conscience, foist this upon the rest of us?

This brings me back to Timothy Anderson, linked to above. Timothy Anderson was a juror in the trial of Joshua Komisarjevsky. Anderson was opposed to the death penalty and yet he voted to put Komisarjevsky to death (let’s put aside the contradictions here for the purposes of this post). He submitted testimony in support of repeal, not only for moral reasons, but because he experienced first-hand the toll it takes on the regular individual to have to make the decision to end someone’s life. We should not be asking this of our fellow citizens.

—–

This post has gone on long enough and meandered far enough, but I want to end with one exchange I viewed near the very end of the debate last night.

Maybe this came up during the day, I don’t know. But it was the first time I’d seen someone mention it yesterday: the death penalty is about who we are and who we want to be. It needs to be said. Put aside finances and the unworkability of the statute and the required appellate process. At its core, the death penalty is about how we wish to be viewed as a society. Are we forgiving, just and fair? Or are we racist, vengeful murderers?

As the member of the public said in response to some chiding by Republican Senator Kissel: “with all due respect, Senator, this is about how history will view us. And history will not look upon us kindly”.

 

Truth in sentencing

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In 1994, Connecticut joined the vast majority of states in enacting the ‘Truth in Sentencing’ law, which did away with good time and other early release opportunities for inmates. It established a three-tiered system for parole: non-violent offenders are eligible for parole upon serving 50% of their sentences, violent offenders upon 85% and murderers not at all.

The bill was in response to growing outcry that people were getting off too easily, some after serving only 10-30% of their sentences. “So we need truth in sentencing”, they said. “We need to know exactly how long people will serve!” Fine, whatever. It is a legislative scheme and it is what it is.

Then prison populations ballooned and recidivism was dropped as an objective of incarceration altogether. Last year, a much needed risk reduction credit bill was passed, awarding 5 days per month to certain inmates while they were in programs in jail and if they didn’t get any disciplinary tickets. The legislature capped this at 50 days per year. The purpose was to encourage inmates to enroll in programs in prison – whether to educate themselves, get psychiatric help or overcome a substance dependency. And it makes sense. The best way to help prevent crimes in the future is to attempt to address the causes of those crimes in the present. If a person robs banks because they have a crippling addiction to crack, locking them up for 5 years is one way to deal with the problem, but it’s not very useful when that individual leaves the jail in 5 years, with no job skills, no education and that same addiction to crack.

But good sense is too much for some legislators. Sen. Andrew Roraback (R-Goshen) and candidate for Congress put on a show at the Capitol yesterday, bringing with him crime victims who were shocked to hear that some inmates were earning this credit and it meant that their eligibility for parole was advanced by some 200 days.

Eligibility. That’s the key. Our supreme court has repeatedly ruled that there is no liberty interest in parole. Which means that the 50% mark of your sentence could come, and you could get a hearing and the parole board could still make you serve 100% of your sentence. And no one can do a damn thing about it.

Every criminal defense lawyer (the ethical ones, at least), tells their clients that they should expect to serve 100% of their sentence. If they get out early, consider it a windfall.

But apparently that’s not what prosecutors and victims advocates are telling victims:

It wasn’t welcome news. The couple [parents of the decedent] said that after the 1996 murder they agreed to accept a plea bargain that allowed Gargliardo to cop to manslaughter and a 27-and-a-half-year sentence. The only reason they said they agreed to the lesser sentence was to avoid putting their four-year-old grandson on the witness stand. They said the possibility of him getting parole parole sooner than that wasn’t fair.  “They promised us,” Lee DeGrosse said.

Who, exactly, promised them that is unclear. But they’re victims and they’re allowed to feel any way they want. Who isn’t allowed to tag along is an elected member of our legislature, who is presumed to have some critical reasoning ability. There is no functional difference between ‘tough on crime’ and ‘dumb on crime’.

To make matters worse, Roraback wants to be heard. And he wants to be heard now. So much so that he’s threatening to vote against his moral convictions on the death penalty, unless these credits are repealed.

There is nothing more disgusting than playing with an issue as important and fundamental as the death penalty over a half-baked and utterly ridiculous idea.

In the name of victims, he purports to do something that will only cause more harm. Take away credits and we return to a time where inmates had no incentive to better themselves, to arm themselves with the opportunities to succeed in the real world. To give them the tools to step away from a life of crime, not embrace it with open arms again because no one cares about them.

In the name of protecting victims and the lies they were told, he moves only to harm them further and create more of them.

As former Judiciary Co-Chair Mike Lawlor explains:

“If you’re going to pick a group of inmates you didn’t want to recidivate, you would start with violent offenders I would assume,” he said in a phone interview.  Lawlor said that the credits don’t ensure an inmate is released early, they only allow them to be up for a parole hearing sooner. During those hearings victims and families are given an opportunity to testify and the board can decide not to release them, he said.  “I’m not aware of any violent offender who’s been released without serving 85 percent of their sentence,” he said. “At the end of the day it’s actually quite unlikely.”

And that’s entirely true. Parole can – and will – likely say “That’s great Mr. X. We grant you parole. At 85% of your sentence. See you in three years.”

Go ahead Mr. Roraback. Vote against your convictions and against common sense. We’ll vote with our convictions and repeal the death penalty anyway.

 

CT death penalty nothing but arbitrary

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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.

 

 

 

I blue myself

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I know what you were thinking. Pervert.

As I snarked (yes, it’s a verb now) on Twitter last night as Governor Malloy delivered his end of the session speech to a joint session of the legislature, yesterday was the first time since 1990 that a Connecticut governor uttered the words “criminal justice reform” and I didn’t want to throw something at the television.

The reason for this new-found restraint isn’t the deep meditation I’ve been practicing, but rather the reality that the legislature did indeed pass some sensible reforms this year. As the nation turns red, Connecticut turned blue, not only in the criminal justice arena but others as well. There was the paid sick leave [full coverage here] bill, the transgender identity bill and the in-state tuition for undocumented students bill. But as is the case with politics generally, there were many things left undone. Here’s a roundup of the criminal justice bills that passed and those that didn’t.

First, the good bills that passed:

  • Decriminalization of possession of less than half an ounce of marijuana.
  • Risk Reduction Credit: the first piece of “smart on crime legislation” to pass the legislature this year (scroll to section 22), this bill provides for 5 days per month of credit towards a reduction in the overall sentence of an inmate. It seems similar to a “good time” bill, but it really isn’t, because there are several offenses that are ineligible for this risk reduction credit and the credit applies only to inmates who participate in programs and maintain good behavior.
  • Home confinement for DUI and drug offenders: as advertised. Scroll to section 26 & 27.
  • Electronic Recording of Custodial Interrogations: finally a videotaping of interrogations bill and yet it feels so incomplete. This bill applies to people accused of capital felonies and Class A & B felonies only. Plus, it doesn’t go into effect until 2014, because apparently, in the 21st century, it’s far to burdensome for police departments to buy a goddamn videocamera and record something. Still, better than nothing.
  • Eyewitness ID reform: another half-measure as the bill now requires double-blind identification procedures “where feasible” but leaves sequential procedures for a “task force” to study. Study what, exactly, I don’t know.
  • An Act Concerning Competency To Stand Trial: I haven’t fully perused this bill yet, but it seems to make some changes to the restoration to competency procedure.
  • Prevention of Prison Rape: this is a terrific bill designed to prevent rape in prisons, which is a real problem. Read the NH Advocate for more.

Bills that should have passed but didn’t:

  • Reducing the radius around schools, within which drug offenders face enhanced penalties, from 1500 feet to 200 feet: This was another great bill that died at the last second, with time running out. This would’ve made another “smart on crime” change, reducing the enhanced penalty zone around schools to 200 feet. As it currently stands, at 1500 feet, major cities have almost no spots that aren’t within that radius of a school. In New Haven, there’s only one: in the middle of a golf course. Too bad. Maybe next year.
  • An Act Making It Clear That It’s Legal To Record Police Officers: This bill, ostensibly proposed in the wake of the Luis Luna fiasco, had great momentum, passing the Senate last week, but then it languished on the House calendar and was never put to a vote.
  • An Act Concerning Speedy Trials: another smart bill that sought to prevent the problem of people being incarcerated pre-trial for longer than the maximum punishment. Unfortunately, it didn’t get as much as a sniff in either the House or Senate.
  • An Act Concerning Sentence Modifications: a favorite of inmates, this bill would’ve removed the current requirement that all inmates serving sentences of 3 years or more need the permission of a prosecutor to even have their modification request heard by a judge. Essentially the bill would’ve removed prosecutors’ ability to cock-block. It didn’t get far.

The bills that shouldn’t have passed and didn’t:

  • An Act Designed To Make a Mockery of The Great Writ: This stupid bill keep getting proposed every year and every year it gets tougher and tougher to beat it back, for some reason. This year it made it out of committee, but thankfully died before a vote in either chamber. I’ve written extensively on why this is a bad, stupid, dangerous bill.
  • An Act Equating a Motor Vehicle With A Fiream: Here. I’ll let you read the summary: ‘To make the penalty for the offense of manslaughter with a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor or any drug, or both, consistent with the penalty for manslaughter in the first degree with a firearm and provide for a rebuttable presumption that any person who causes the death of another person while operating a motor vehicle under the influence of intoxicating liquor or drug, or both, did so evincing an extreme indifference to human life in a manner that constitutes manslaughter in the first degree.’ The penalty for manslaughter with a firearm? 45 years. That’s forty five. Thankfully this abomination, after passing the Senate (!), stalled in the House.
  • The DNA upon arrest bill: I wasn’t aware of this, but the bill passed with a great amendment: it applies only to those accused of serious felonies and who have been convicted of a felony in the past and haven’t provided a DNA sample. So, basically, it means no change in the law. [Link is to the House Amendment that was approved by the Senate, essentially the relevant portion of the bill.]
  • Establishing a ‘gun offender’ registry: this was a novel idea but didn’t make it far.
  • Thanks to Capitol Watch for reminding me about the stricter penalties for cell phone use while driving bills that apparently went quietly into that gentle night.

The bill I wish never passes, so we can keep talking about it forever:

  • The Ryan McKeen loves Susan Bysiewicz bill: This would have eliminated the hotly contested “active practice” requirement for someone wishing to be Attorney General. The House passed it, the Senate didn’t vote.

You can find a very unhelpful list of all the bills passed here. If any of you so much as thinks about mentioning ‘d____ p______’, I will /kickban you.

For those who don’t get the title of this post or the hilarious picture of Tobias Funke, here’s context: