A Mike "Depraved Indifference" Lawlor Files Update

Public Safety And The Woman Who Would Not Be A Victim

As time rolled on, it became clear that the Risk Reduction Earned Credit program -- smuggled in an omnibus implementer bill past the usual legislative oversight committees by its architect, Under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Mike Lawlor -- increased rather than reduced risks for victims of violent crimes such as Ms. Pichette.

Since early release credits had been awarded retrospectively to prisoners who had not complied with their Inmate’s Accountability Plan, the bulk of inmates showered with such unmerited rewards had not earned their credits. In addition, the credits were to be made available to violent criminals, including those incarcerated for: threatening in the first degree; strangulation in the second degree; assault in the first degree; assault of an elderly, blind, disabled, pregnant or mentally retarded person in the second degree; promoting prostitution and human trafficking; kidnapping in the first degree – and arson which, following Mr. Bartis’ incarceration, would claim the lives of others in Ms. Pichette extended family. Republican legislators would laterpoint out such fatal defects in Mr. Lawlor’s program – to no avail.

Seven years after Mr. Bartis had been incarcerated for the brutal assault on Ms. Pichette, her cousin’s family was murdered by two men who, Ms. Pichette says, “were wrongly paroled.”

These two worthies were Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, convicted and sentenced for capital murder in December 2011. The two parolees set out from a halfway house, broke into a home in Cheshire, beat into unconsciousness with a baseball bat Dr. William Petit, forced his wife to withdraw money from a bank, raped his wife, raped one of his daughters, and torched the house, murdering both daughters and their mother. Like a modern day Ishmael tossed on the shore from a shattered Pequod, only Mr. Petit was left to tell the tale. Courageously and steadfastly, Dr. Petit persevered through months of trial testimony, at the end of which the two murderers were convicted of capital felony murder and assigned to death row.

A year and four months after the two murderers had been sentenced to death, the Democrat dominated General Assembly, led by Mr. Lawlor and current Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Andrew McDonald -- then the co-chairs of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee -- abolished the death penalty for all future capital felony crimes, including terrorist acts, serial murders, multiple murders and murders of police officers and prison officials. The cowardly and campaign-conscious General Assembly left the death penalty in force for the eleven prisoners languishing on death row, firmly convinced that no judge in Connecticut would permit the state to execute a convicted capital felon in the absence of a law prescribing capital punishment for convicted murderers.

This is the recent past that hangs threateningly over Ms. Pichette. And it is not over.