Any true victim’s advocate in Connecticut could not turn a
blind eye to Michael Lawlor’s early release Earned Risk Reduction Credits
program. The program awards get-out-of-jail early credits to inmates in
Connecticut’s prisons. If prison is the stick the state may use to discourage
serious crime, Mr. Lawlor’s program is the carrot that presumably will induce
criminals to behave properly while in prison. Mr. Lawlor was once a prosecutor
for the State's Attorney Office in New Haven and later co-chairman of the General Assembly's Judiciary
Committee from 1995 to 2011 before he was tapped by newly elected Governor
Dannel Malloy to serve as undersecretary for criminal justice policy.
Mr. Lawlor’s early release program was rushed through the
General Assembly at the tail end of a hectic session the most prominent feature
of which was the marginalization of the Republican Party. Mr. Lawlor’s program
was not vetted in the usual manner: There was no public hearing during the
course of which the Democratic dominated legislature might have heard – from
the victim’s advocate, among others – objections to certain characteristics of
Mr. Lawlor’s brainchild. Those objections were bound to come out in some venue,
for the program remains seriously flawed.
Leading Republicans argued at the time, and continue to
argue, that the Earned Risk Reduction Credits program should not have been
applied a) retro-actively to all prisoners or b) to violent criminals. In
recent days, Mr. Lawlor, who has a positive gift for misunderstanding
Republican opposition to his program, has insisted that Republican objectionsare little more than campaign opportunities for Republicans in the upcoming
elections.
A prospective application of the program would have
permitted Commissioner of Prisons Lou Arnone to identify lapses in the program
over a period of time, and the legislature could have responded appropriately
with program patches that might have spared the cities of Meriden and
Manchester the grief that came their way when two prisoners who had earned
early release credits under Mr. Lawlor’s hastily conceived, poorly executed
program murdered two people in robbery attempts. In both cases, the behavior of
the murderers WHILE IN PRISON should have made them ineligible for ANY early
release credits.
Frankie “The Razor” Resto Gets Time Off
When Republican state Senator Len Suzio was so bold as to
request a suspension of Mr. Lawlor’s program until it could properly be
reviewed following a needless murder in Meriden
-- four blocks from where Mr. Suzio lives – Governor Malloy’s
undersecretary for criminal justice policy proceeded to explain that the
murderer would have been released earlier under the old dispensation, rather as
if this somehow answered the objections
of Republicans that THE PROGRAM SHOULD NOT HAVE INCLUDED VIOLENT CRIMINALS. The
Meriden murderer had been given demerits while in prison for dealing drugs and
burning his mattress. Why was he given ANY early release credits? Why was he
included in the program? Possible answer: He was a retrospective candidate and
as such was automatically admitted.
Why was Frankie Resto, accused of murdering Ibrahim Ghazal in Meriden, not quickly
rearrested after he had committed recommitable offences before the murder
If released under
parole, a convict can be apprehended and immediately re-incarcerated without a
court order. When released on probation, however, a warrant for arrest must be
procured, which consumes more time before an offender can be taken off the
street and re-incarcerated, a critical factor in the chain of events leading to
the murder of Ibrahim Ghazal.
In January Mr. Resto
was approved for release under parole by the Board of Pardons and Paroles, but
Mr. Resto’s scheduled release in February was delayed because the Department of
Corrections (DOC) could not finalize arrangements for a sponsor. It would have
been within the power of the parole board to delay his release until he had
served 100% of his sentence. Mr. Resto earlier had been denied parole under the
law replaced by Mr. Lawlor’s early release program. The delay stretched out for
two months, until the DOC was compelled
on April 12 to release Mr. Resto for "time-served.” Mr. Resto was
released for time served because the 199 days of risk reduction credits he was
awarded had reduced the expiration of his term from November to mid-April.
Now eligible for release under time-served, Mr. Resto did not need a sponsor --
and so he was released under probation – not parole. The re-incarceration
process under probation was more lengthy and cumbersome than would have been
the case under parole. Mr. Resto's apprehension and re-incarceration would
have been nearly instantanious had he been released under parole. Under the regime replaced
by the early release program, he may very well have been apprehended before the
night of June 27, when his path crossed with Mr. Ghazal.
When the objection to Mr. Lawlor’s program is that criminals
convicted of rape, arson, sex with a child under 13, poisoning the water supply
as a terrorist act – all violent crimes -- should not be the subjects of an early
release regime, and the answer to the objection is that a specific murderer
would have served a couple of weeks more time under an unreformed regime, do we
not have a dunderheaded failure to understand the objection?
Firing the Messenger
At an open public hearing boycotted by Mr. Lawlor and all
but one Democratic legislator, Ms. Cruz identified other serious lapses in Mr.
Lawlor’s Earned Risk Reduction Credits program. Upon incarceration, according
to Mr. Arnone, “an Offender
Accountability Plan” is
initiated that identifies “treatment programs the offender should take
advantage of to address his or her needs. These can include education,
substance abuse treatment, domestic violence counseling parenting and others.”
In some cases, Ms. Cruz pointed out in the hearing boycotted by Mr. Lawlor, the
therapeutic nature of the programs was vitiated because the rehabilitative
programs may not have been tailored to the prisoners. Mr. Lawlor pointedly
refused to answer the point, choosing instead to assert that the Republican
legislators with whom he had worked when he himself was a legislator were
motivated by political considerations.
Ms. Cruz and
Republicans leaders understandably wary about Mr. Lawlor’s program also pointed
out that the program disturbed long standing plea bargains made between defense
attorneys, prosecutors and affected victims of crime, an important
consideration since most prosecutions in Connecticut are plea bargained to
avoid expensive trials. What effects will Mr. Lawlor’s early release credits have
on future plea bargains? Why should crime victims agree to a sentencing “plea
bargain” the terms of which will be altered under Mr. Lawlor’s program?
These are all
reasonable questions that should have been vetted in a public hearing before
Mr. Lawlor’s deficient program was adopted during the final minutes of hectic
session dominated by Democrats in the General Assembly.
In his early days
when the prospect of a career in politics was but a glint in his eye, Governor
Malloy was also a prosecutor. Mr. Malloy’s lovely and capable wife ran a rape
crisis center. Mr. Malloy knows that rapists and other violent offenders
qualify for early release under Mr. Lawlor’s deficient program. Yet his answer
to objections raised by Ms. Cruz to a program in which two murderers were granted
early release credits is – UNBELIEVABLY – to advertise as open the putative
“non-partisan position” now held by Ms. Cruz.
And this, we are to
understand, is not a politically motivated move by Malloyalists to, in words
easily adapted from King Henry II to his own loyalists, rid the governor of a
meddlesome political functionary whose public criticism has grievously offended
the chief architect of the seriously defective,
blood ridden Earned Risk Reduction Credits program. The advisory committee
now shamelessly advertising for a new state victim advocate is chaired by Mr.
Lawlor, according to a story in the Register Citizen.
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