Ibraham Ghazal, the co-owner of an EZMart in Meriden, was not safe. Mr. Ghazal was
murdered by Frankie Resto, a prisoner released early because the benefits of
Mr. Lawlor’s program had been disbursed retroactively and not prospectively to Connecticut prisoners -- including rapists, which Mr. Lawlor evidently did
not consider a violent crime. Death has its privileges, and Mr. Ghazal is now safe.
Before being released early, Frankie “The Razor” Resto was by all accounts a dangerous fellow. He was called “The Razor” because a
razor was his choice of weapon whenever he felt inclined to shake down drug
dealers. Correction officers who had daily commerce with Mr. Resto might have
told Mr. Lawlor, had he bothered to ask them, that “The Razor” was not a
peaceable fellow. Mr. Resto burned his mattress while in prison, belonged to a
violent gang and was a stranger to Mathew 5:9 – “Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.” Upon his early release, Mr. Resto
immediately procured a gun – not purchased at a gun store – and shot Mr. Ghazal
once fatally in the chest after he had without resistance obliged Mr. Resto’s demand
that he turn over cash in a register -- on the whole, not the sort of
gentleman who should have been rewarded by Mr. Lawlor with
get-out-of-jail-early credits.
Other violent criminals have been let loose early by Mr.
Lawlor; precisely how many have returned to prison is something of a mystery,
because Mr. Lawlor – once co-chair of the judiciary committee along with Andrew
McDonald, appointed by Mr. Malloy to Connecticut’s Supreme Court – is adept at
hiding the data necessary to evaluate the success of his program in a welter of
other data.
After former State Senator Len Suzio, along with Victims Advocate Michelle Cruz, had made a public fuss over the murder by “The
Razor," they were politically disappeared: Ms. Cruz, a longtime energetic and committed Victims Advocate, was
replaced by a political mule who soon left, and Mr. Suzio lost an
election in an overwhelmingly Democratic District by a few hundred votes of almost
30,000 cast. Mr. Suzio once again is running for his old seat, and if the
Republican Party in Connecticut is alert and awake, it should support him
vigorously.
By persistently overreaching – Mr. Lawlor recently initiated a
new program that would allow low-level convicted criminals to attend in-state
colleges without, one leading Republican legislator has noted, adequate supervision – those in charge of public safety, Mr. Malloy
included, have not been tending to the work-a-day business of government, the
primary mission of which is public safety.
At Mr. Malloy’s urging, the Democratic dominated General
Assembly repealed the death penalty for eleven convicted criminals who had been
sentenced to death by multiple juries for having committed heinous crimes.
Among other reasons for abolishing the death penalty, Democrat legislators
argued that the penalty did not deter felons from committing murder, little
noticing that the acceptance of that proposition would logically require the
abolition of all penalties. The death penalties of the Cheshire murderers who
wiped out an entire family, but for Dr. William Petit, who managed to escape
the arson murder of his wife and two daughters, have recently been commuted;
one of the murderer-rapists was resentenced to six life-terms plus an
additional 106 years in prison.
Presumably, if the multiple murderer-rapist managed to kill
a guard or another prisoner, his sentence might be upped to – horrors! -- SEVEN
life terms. Not even Mr. Lawlor, whose questionable programs are rooted in the
therapeutic value schooling for cons, would dare to assert that the additional
life term would be a greater deterrent to incarcerated murderers than the prospect
of death, about which Ben Johnson once said, "Depend upon it, sir, when a
man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind
wonderfully."
Six months after he had been released from a Connecticut
prison, Jean Jacques, an illegal alien convicted and incarcerated in
Connecticut for 17 years on an attempted murder charge, was let loose upon the
general public. Mr. Jacques should have been turned over to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for
deportation upon his release from prison. The deportation, which ought to have
been a routine matter, never occurred. Set loose upon the general public, Mr. Jacques murdered a woman,
stabbing her 17 times, one thrust for each year he had spent in prison. This
gruesome crime recently has been repeated by yet another illegal alien who also
had been convicted and imprisoned in Connecticut for attempted murder but who
had not been deported to his country of origin upon completion of his sentence.
Mr. Suzio and other legislators concerned with public safety
have been pressuring Mr. Lawlor for several years to compile and release data that
would allow monitoring legislators to determine the effectiveness of his
programs on recidivism rates. Mr. Lawlor should have been monitoring his own
programs, releasing pertinent data on a regular basis to both legislators and
the general public. But Mr. Lawlor, a public safety administrator who operates
as if he were a separate nation in what is perhaps the most secretive
gubernatorial administration in recent memory, has not been obliging. A suit bought by Mr. Suzio to compel the release of necessary data on recidivism rates is wending its way
through Connecticut’s court system.
As we all know, judicial gears grind exceedingly slowly.
Perhaps before the judicial issue is decided, an awakened public will realize
that legislative monitoring is necessary to keep the public informed and safe. Knowledge
is power, but especially in a republican form of government, is not a power
that should belong exclusively to the powerful.
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