The reviews of Danbury State Attorney’s Stephan Sedensky preliminary
criminal report are now in. Mr. Sedensky would be prudent to hang on to his present job, by
his bloody fingernails if necessary.
Mr. Sedensky’s preliminary report, Connecticut Commentary
noted elsewhere, may be little more than a desperate attempt to control
the narrative that is sure to follow the release of the full criminal report at
some point in the near future.
Hartford Courant columnist and humorist Colin McEnroe was not amused by assertions made by Mr. Sedensky in the preliminary report:
“Sedensky reverse-engineered his arguments, starting out with the conclusion that he didn't want to release the tapes and then combing the statutes to see if he could find any reasons for that. [Superior Court Judge Eliot] Prescott called him on it, branding his claim that 911 tapes are the same as signed witness statements borderline 'frivolous' and averring that Sedensky 'has not come close to meeting the burden' on his bizarre argument that people in desperate circumstances would be less likely to call 911 if they thought a recording might be given, later, to the press."
Prior to the release of the preliminary report, Governor
Dannel Malloy had placed a ten foot pole between himself and Mr. Sedensky, Connecticut Commentary reported:
“Governor Dannel Malloy is a former prosecutor, and even he was beginning to show signs of impatience more than a week before the release of Mr. Sedensky’s preliminary report. Mr. Malloy told reporters in Farmington on November 12, ‘I’m frustrated that the report has not yet been issued.’
“The governor was careful to put some distance between himself and Mr. Sedensky. State attorneys, Mr. Malloy pointed out, are attached to the division of criminal justice, an independent executive branch agency. ‘So that people understand this,’ Mr. Malloy said, ‘they don’t work for me. So I’ll put it a different way: if they did, this report would be out already. I'm anxious to get this report out to the public, out to you folks,’ Mr. Malloy told the assembled reporters. ‘That's what I'm anxious about.’”
Journal Inquirer Managing Editor and Columnist Chris Powell liberally pummeled the usual suspects:
Mr. Sedensky: “An argument made by the state's attorney who wrote the Newtown report, Stephen Sedensky, embodies the cynicism of it all. Sedensky maintains that the murder of the schoolchildren should be considered child abuse so that everything about the investigation of the massacre can be deemed confidential and legally kept secret. Dan Klau, a lawyer and member of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, notes that if Sedensky believed his own argument, his whole report on the massacre would have to be suppressed and the public would get no accounting at all.”
Governor Malloy and the General Assembly: “And Connecticut's freedom-of-information law already has been weakened by Governor Malloy and the General Assembly and likely will be weakened again in the legislature's next session in the name of assuaging victims of crime but actually to exempt police and prosecutors from accountability for their work.”
The enemies of Connecticut’s Freedom of Information laws: “Weakening freedom-of-information law in regard to crime will not only relieve police and prosecutors of accountability; it also will increase their ability and incentive to release information selectively and surreptitiously for their own political purposes.
“This has happened for decades in sensitive or politically related investigations in Connecticut, particularly when prosecutors, both state and federal, have sought to intimidate defendants, witnesses, or political adversaries. Rare is the grand jury investigation in Connecticut whose prosecutors don't arrange such leaks, particularly to the only statewide newspaper, the Hartford Courant.”
And the overseers and enablers of Connecticut’s continuing social disintegration: “Disarming the law-abiding amid the worsening social disintegration caused by decades of mistaken government policy was a policy objective of liberalism long before the massacre in Newtown.”
Connecticut Commentary had been hectoring Mr. Sedensky for
months to release to the General Assembly a preliminary report on the shootings, so
that Connecticut’s chief law making body might have at its disposal authorized data
to write a reasonable law designed to prevent future incidents such as the
Sandy Hook mass murders.
As usual, the usual culprits spurned such advice and went
with their gut instincts. The result is a law that will do nothing to prevent
criminals from illegally acquiring weapons to commit mayhem, especially in places
like schools that are gun free.
Months after the mayhem, the town of Newtown, the site of
the Sandy Hook massacre, appropriated funds to place armed defenders in its
schools. Newtown’s resolve to protect its school children by means of armed personnel
is a refreshing sign that those in Newtown directly responsible for the safety
of its school children have not succumbed to the blandishments of most members
of the state’s U.S. Congressional delegation, all Democrats, who hope to stem
criminal behavior by imposing gun restrictions on non-criminals in Connecticut
who own weapons.
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