After maintaining a four month quarantine on information concerning
the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter, Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen
Sedensky dumped some arrest warrant information into Connecticut’s highly
speculative media stream. The closely guarded information, released only days
before Connecticut’s General Assembly
was poised to write bills restricting gun ownership, begs the question:
Why now?
When criticized by a few Connecticut reporters and commentators for having withheld information inadvertently released by
state police Col. Danny Stebbins during a New Orleans Chiefs of Police
conference, investigators suddenly and inexplicably abandoned their often
iterated threadbare rational: that releasing information in the arrest warrants
would compromise “an active investigation.” They let part of the cat, its nose
only, out of the bag.
Apparently the released arrest warrant data was harmless
enough to allow Mr. Sedensky to release the data about three months before the
criminal investigation will be completed sometime in June.
Journalists, the intended recipients of carefully screened
data, do not often enough rely on their best reportorial instincts, which ought
to signal to them that artfully edited data is often a craven attempt to slice
and dice information for political purposes. If any of the tribunes of the
people in Connecticut had asked Governor Dannel Malloy or legislators who need
accurate data to write effective laws restricting gun ownership why the data
dump -- released months before a criminal investigation is due to be completed
but only days before legislators are due to present their final bills -- will
not compromise a yet incomplete investigation, the answer to the question is
blowing in the wind.
Mr. Sedensky in his media release insisted that “an ongoing and active criminal investigation” to be effective
requires the imprisoning of information that may be necessary in an official
“ongoing investigation.” The rules of “Professional Responsibility as they
apply to prosecutors require that I take steps to not make extra judicial
statements that I know or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means
of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially
prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter… the release of any
information could potentially jeopardize a future prosecution if evidence were
developed to support one. It is not unusual to develop a viable prosecution
late in an investigation when one was not contemplated earlier.”
A wide-awake reporter at the Journal Inquirer
asked the governor’s Chief of Staff Mark Ojakian, and through him Governor
Dannel Malloy, whether Mr. Stebbens would be penalized in any way for having
been responsible for the information leak in New Orleans that found its way
into a piece written by Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News.
Surely the leak of such carefully quarantined information
had a “substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative
proceeding,” the fig leaf so often cited by investigators who wished to keep
data from legislators contemplating bills restricting Second Amendment rights.
Mr. Ojakian’s response was a barely suppressed yawn: “Those
conferences take place for law enforcement officials to share information with
each other — confidentially, in private — that might help their investigations.
We were satisfied with his [Mr. Stebbins’] explanation."
In a piece written for The Connecticut Law Tribune,
criminal defense lawyer Norm Pattis, whose specialty lies in torching
prosecutorial pretentions, doubted that further charges are pending and
ventured to hope that “someone
challenges whether the privileges the state claims justifies this cloak and
dagger editing are justified.”
Responding to Mr.
Sedensky’s new fig leaf that redacted portions of the released
affidavits “would identify persons
cooperating with the investigation, thus possibly jeopardizing their personal
safety and well-being," Mr. Pattis noted, chortling gently behind his
hand, “Somehow, I doubt there will be further charges. I hope someone
challenges whether the privileges the state claims justifies this cloak and
dagger editing are justified… That is an extraordinary claim. From a distance,
it appears that Mr. Lanza acted alone. He is dead. His mother, with whom he
lived, is also dead, an apparent victim of her son's rampage. Mr. Lanza can
hurt no one any longer…”
Did Mr.Sedensky,
alone or in concert with others, sneak one past Superior Court Judge John F.Blawie when he asked for judicial permission to deep-six the redacted information?
“Surprising as it
may seem,” Mr. Pattis writes, “the state's filing suggests that there is an
active investigation of another defendant in the Newtown shooting case, a
witness with such incendiary information that his or her safety would be in
jeopardy were it to become public.”
Wracked by what
U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal calls the “horror” of the massacre at Sandy Hook
Elementary School, the tortured parents of 26 innocent victims in Newtown must
await the lifting of the fig leaf sometime in June, when the final criminal
report is released, before their hearts may find rest in the truth that will
set them free. In the meantime, they will have to be satisfied with legislation
inspired by the rush of circumstances that very likely will not satisfy their
curiosity or mitigate their pain.
Comments
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Now comes a gun control bill, but no hearings. What will it do to prevent future Sandy Hook incidents? The law implicates both Conneciticut's and the U.S. Constitution. Have our legislators given any consideration to their authority to control arms our citizens use to defend themselves?
Regardless, the important thing is that we Nutmeggers send a message to the universe at large. We can operate in a bi-partisan manner to craft a set of laws with or without purpose or authority.