Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” – a remark attributed by Mark Twain to Disraeli Len Suzio lost his seat to incumbent State Senator Dante Bartolomeo in a hard fought contest in 2014 by 1% of the vote and won the seat back in 2016 by 2.8 % of the vote.  His is a particularly difficult seat for Republicans; registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in the 13th District roughly by a two to one margin. Think of Sisyphus rolling his stone up a perilously steep incline.

Enough! This is the way a woman described her  rape assault to Connecticut Commentary  in 2014: “James had assaulted me many years ago and was sentenced to one year, I believe. He served six months. A protective order was put in place. Approximately six months after his release…  He broke into my house and waited for me to return home. He beat me for hours using anything at his disposal: the china cabinet, the TV, stereo, speakers, his fists, the phone. I sustained extensive serious physical and mental trauma. I had escaped the house twice, but he dragged me back and continued beating me. The third time I escaped the house, a snow plow truck driver saw me on the side of the road in a pool of blood, interceded and saved my life.”

The piling-on began following admissions made by Lisa Wilson Foley that a contract between herself and John Rowland, a radio talk show host following his stint in prison, was fraudulent, and recently Mr. Rowland, a burr in the side of Governor Dannel Malloy, announced he had recorded his last show. On the political stump – the governor, like his beau ideal President Barrack Obama, is rarely off the political stump – Mr. Malloy, along with the usual media attack pack, had called upon WTIC to sever its relations with Mr. Rowland. Even Mr. Malloy’s Undersecretary of Criminal Justice Michael Lawlor contributed his mite, according to a story in a New Haven paper . One of Mr. Rowland’s programs, Mr. Lawlor pointed out, “included talk about guns, and as a convicted felon,  Rowland is ineligible to legally own one .” Sure, sure. But the law – even the new gun law promulgated and supported by his eminence the Undersecretary of Criminal Justice Lawlor – is a me...

    On Friday, February 28, Frankie “The Razor” Resto was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford to 53 years in prison for having murdered Abraham Ghazal. Mr. Resto had earlier rejected a plea arrangement, which must have caused Governor Dannel Malloy’s prison czar, Michael Lawlor, a moment of worry. Trials are unpredictable public presentations. One never knows what skeleton from what closet might pop out at you in the public arena. All the possible skeletons disappeared when Mr. Resto and his lawyer, Glenn Conway, agreed to palaver with the state and arrive at a plea arrangement satisfactory to both.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past"  – William Faulkner Faulkner’s notion that we drag the past into the present with us in order to plot our futures is just common sense. In our life’s play, perhaps the most important character, ever-present but invisible, is the lived and remembered past. We learn from the past because we do not wish to be doomed to repeat fatal errors. And this applies in a darker sense to those who have suffered grievous wrongs. The moment is never far from them, and sometimes the moment, if you are a woman who has suffered a vicious assault, is present as a recalled event, a haunting ever present horror and a future possibility. After Deanna Pichette was assaulted by James Bartis III in December 2000, she was immediately hospitalized. This was the second go-around for Mr. Bartis, who had served six months in prison for a prior assault on Ms. Pichette, then his girlfriend. The hospital report on the injuries sustained by Ms. Pi...

State Victim Advocate Michelle Cruz released the statement below following the arrest of Kezlyn Mendez on a charge of murder. It all sounds vaguely familiar and parallels closely a murder in Meriden, an account of which may be found by clicking on the link provided here . State Victim Advocate Michelle Cruz is appealing once again to the Governor’s Office and the Commissioner of the Department of Correction to immediately suspend the risk reduction earned credit program.