Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Are we more safe now than we were before Governor Dannel Malloy’s prison czar, Michael Lawlor, began handing out get-out-of-jail-early credits to so called “nonviolent” incarcerated criminals? 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.

Mike Lawlor is, in the precise meaning of the term, a lawbreaker. And unfortunately, he cannot plead ignorance of the law. In January 2011, Mr. Lawlor was appointed by newly installed Governor Dannel Malloy as Connecticut’s Under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning, a newly created position whipped up by Mr. Malloy because the energetic governor wanted to put his mark on Connecticut’s penological system. Mr. Lawlor seemed the obvious choice: he had served in the state’s House of Representatives for twelve terms, 24 years, 16 years of which were spent as the co-chair of the Judiciary Committee along with State Senator Andrew McDonald, later appointed to Connecticut’s Supreme Court by Mr. Malloy.

Tom Dudchik’s Capitol Report in mid-October was full of portentous headlines: “ Malloy's approval rating at all-time low … Shrug: 'I've never run my life to be popular'... TheDay: Malloy's very bad year... Stevens: Malloy 'toxic'... Record-Journal: Where have Connecticut jobs gone?... ” The single event that precipitated this run of bad news for Governor Dannel Malloy, the most progressive chief executive in Connecticut since Wilber Cross, was  the most recent Quinnipiac University poll .  First elected in 1930, when the progressive era in American politics was in full swing – Yes, Virginia, progressivism is even older than that, though the Cross administration is but a few years older than Bernie Sanders, progressivism’s great white hope for president  -- Mr. Cross abolished child labor and instituted the state’s minimum wage rate. Grateful for superman governors during The Great Depression, Connecticut later would show its appreciation of Mr. Cr...

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient -- Henry David Thoreau Mike Lawlor – once, along with Andrew McDonald, the co-chair of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee – was tapped by Governor Dannel Malloy in 2011 as the governor’s prison czar. His official title is Under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning and, like other Malloyalists, Mr. Lawlor has a serious case of reformitus. Mr. Malloy is similarly contaminated.

    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.

By Len Suzio Mr. Suzio was State Senator for the district in which the vicious murder below occurred. Connecticut Commentary has followed the story through all its permutations . Many of you may remember the cold blooded murder of Ibrahim Ghazal, an innocent 70 year-old store owner in Meriden at the end of June 2012. That story became a sensation because the murder was videotaped by the store security and because the man accused of the murder was a hardened criminal who had been released early from his prison sentence courtesy of Connecticut's "Early Release" law. The video showed Mr. Ghazal handing over the money without resistance and then a person later identified as Frankie Resto shooting him at point blank range. As the prosecutor prepared the case for trial a plea bargain deal was floated in front of Mr. Resto. The "deal" would have potentially reduced the sentence Mr. Resto would incur from a maximum of 80 years to only 40 years in exch...

Some stories just make your brain pop. U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal was visiting with Gregory and Celeste Fulcher, whose daughter, Erika Robinson, 26, had been slain in a nightclub shooting by Adrian Bennett, 28, aka “Bread.” Mr. “Bread,” Mr. Fulcher told Mr. Blumenthal, should not have had a gun, and he should not have been on parole: “It’s senseless, he shouldn’t have been out of jail walking the streets as a convicted felon.” Fulcher said of Mr. Bennett. “The system failed us, but I also blame the establishment.”

Some stories just make your brain pop. U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal was visiting with Gregory and Celeste Fulcher, whose daughter, Erika Robinson, 26, had been slain in a nightclub shooting by Adrian Bennett, 28, aka “Bread.” Mr. “Bread,” Mr. Fulcher told Mr. Blumenthal , should not have had a gun, and he should not have been on parole: “It’s senseless, he shouldn’t have been out of jail walking the streets as a convicted felon.” Fulcher said of Mr. Bennett. “The system failed us, but I also blame the establishment.”

Danbury State Attorney Stephen Sedensky, the keeper of the Sandy Hook secrets, has so far had a fairly easy time of it, but disquieting murmurs rend the air. The Associated Press (AP) last July petitioned Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) to order the release of 911 tapes made during the mass shooting of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. The commission found – surprise! – that such information could not be withheld from the public merely because Mr. Sedensky asserted a criminal investigation was ongoing .

If Frankie “the Razor” Resto were an AR15 semi-automatic rifle and present laws banning him had been in effect on June 27, he would not have been permitted within spitting distance of Meridan when, newly released from prison, he entered an EZMart store and fatally shot its co-owner, Ibraham Ghazal , according to arrest records. But Mr. Resto was at that point only an ex-con who had been given get-out-of-jail-early credits under a problem plagued program that was the brainchild of Governor Dannel Malloy’s prison commisar, Mike Lawlor. Mr. Resto's criminal resume was such that he should never have been given early release credits under any circumstances; he should never have been paroled, and he should have served his entire sentence behind bars. Following his release, Mr. Resto should have been monitored carefully by Mr. Lawlor’s somnolent watchdogs and rearrested if he so much as jaywalked.

When the Democratic dominated General Assembly perhaps unwittingly passed Bill HB 6650 establishing a Risk Reduction Earned Credits program for some prisoners incarcerated for violent crimes, the opposition from Republicans was nearly instantaneous. Then State Senator Len Suzio took the lead in agitating against the program. He was not alone. In a June 6, 2011 media release , State Senator Joe Markley said that the program “amounts to a jail break.” Mr. Markley went on to list the categories of violent prisoners eligible for early release under the program:

Michael Lawlor, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Undersecretary of Criminal Justice for Connecticut and the architect of the state’s troubled early release Earned Risk Reduction Credits program , has given us a peek into Mr. Malloy’s views on pending legislation affecting gun control.   According to Mr. Lawlor, a number of areas need to be addressed by the legislature. They include :

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 cour...

The Hartford Courant has ignored its own admittedly unscientific poll, which asks “Should inmates beable to earn early release with re-entry programs?” Of the 508 responses received by the paper, 89 percent of respondents answered that question “No.” The number of those answering “Yes” was a slender 11 percent. On the basis of a recent editorial , “ Give Inmates A Better Chance On The Outside ,” one must assume the Courant editorial page editors fall among the 11 percenters.

Sen. Joe Markley (R-Southington) has written to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy urging the governor to suspend the state’s new program which enables violent felons to be released early from prison. In the letter, Sen. Markley cited the recent case involving Frankie Resto, who is charged with the June 27 murder of 70-year-old Meriden small business owner Ibrahim Ghazal. Resto, a violent felon, had been released early from prison under the state’s new Risk Reduction Earned Credit (RREC) program.

It cannot be a good sign that Michael Lawlor, Governor Dannel Malloy’s undersecretary for criminal justice policy at the Office of Policy and Management, seems incapable of making a proper distinction between violent prisoners under his jurisdiction and non-violent prisoners. Purely as a practical matter, the distinction was dramatically illustrated when Frankie Resto, released from prison early after having received credits under the General Assembly’s new Risk Reduction Earned Credits program, entered an EZ Mart store in Meriden and shot to death co-owner of the store Ibrahim Ghazal, who handed over the money he demanded to Mr. Resto before he was shot, according to police reports. Other reports demonstrate that Mr. Resto should not have been a candidate for early release under a flawed program that awards credits to violent criminals. The bill establishing the program was rushed through the legislature during its final hectic days, without the benefit of public hearings and ...

State Senator Len Suzio held a news conference in the Legislative Office Building, sparsely attended by the public but well attended by the state’s media, to call public attention to what he regards as serious failures in Connecticut’s newly adopted and Orwellian named early release Risk Reduction Earned Credits program. The title of the program begs the question -- Risk Reduction for whom? Certainly Ibrahim Ghazal’s risk of getting murdered as he was peaceably going about his daily business at an EZ Mart store in Meriden was not reduced after the program was hastily adopted in a legislative session normally devoted to budget fixes. A Democratic dominated General Assembly joined at the hip to the first Democratic governor in more than 20 years, Dannel Malloy,   has made it possible for ambitious Democrats to pass hastily contrived bills through a sausage making assembly line that in the past was considerably more thoughtful and deliberative.

Meriden falls within state Senator Len Suzio’s bailiwick. It was there on June 27 that Frankie Resto, recently released from prison under the state’s new and controversial Risk Reduction Earned Credits program, wandered into an EZ Mart store and shot to death Ibraham Ghazal, according to police who later apprehended and arrested Mr. Resto for the murder. Mr. Resto earned 199 days’ worth of credits toward early release while serving a prison sentence for two prior robberies. The murder of Ghazal almost immediately called into question both the purpose and the construction of the early release program, which enables violent felons to shorten their prison sentences if they abide by certain administrative rules. Prison officials and the Malloy administration, as well as legislators who crafted the program, evidentially wished to place in the hands of prison officials additional tools they felt would contribute to reducing risky behavior within the prison, hence the title o...

On July 6, two days after Independence Day, the children of Meriden store owner Ibraham Ghazal were featured in the Meriden Record Journal . Very likely they would have preferred to remain in obscurity, but the murder of their father had thrust notoriety upon them. A little more than a week earlier, the father of Tamer and Tharwat Ghazal had been shot and killed in the store he owned with a partner by a gunman who, it later was determined, had been a candidate for a Risk Reduction Credit Program passed into law by the General Assembly at the end of its hectic session. Tamer Ghazal, an attorney from Jordan, was reluctant to talk about the murder. But when he was told by the paper’s reporter that the likely gunman who had killed his father had been released from prison without having served his full sentence for an earlier robbery, he asked, “How did he get out early?” A bewildered store clerk working the cash register at the EZ Mart during the crime – Mr. Ghazal surrendered t...