Record-Journal
11-27-2007, 10:29 PM
By Adam Wittenberg, Record-Journal staff
HARTFORD – The legislature’s Judiciary Committee considered 15 proposals aimed at improving the criminal justice system Tuesday, four months after the slaying of a mother and her two daughters in Cheshire.
All five lawmakers who represent the town either drafted their own bill or played a role in crafting one of the proposals.
Rep. Alfred C. Adinolfi, R-Cheshire, who said he lives six doors down from where the killings took place, on Sorghum Mill Drive, began the hearing by reading a letter from Dr. William A. Petit Jr., who survived the home invasion in July.
“Words cannot express how sad I am that nothing you will do can undo what happened to my family,” Petit wrote Adinolfi and the committee’s leaders. “It is so urgently important that you, as our legislative body, learn from these awful events and take full advantage of this opportunity to comprehensively change our laws to better protect other innocent members of our society.”
Petit also urged lawmakers to put aside their political differences in the interest of public safety.
Much of the political jockeying took place outside the hearing, which featured a mix of state officials and members of the public.
Senate Republicans held a press conference before the session to hail their proposal, which includes a three-strikes law aimed at locking up repeat violent offenders for life.
"This is meant to go after the most hardened, violent, repeat criminals," said Sen. Sam Caligiuri, a Re-publican who represents Southington and Cheshire and the primary author of his party's three-strikes proposal.
Caligiuri said the Republicans favor passing a separate three-strikes law instead of including the lan-guage in the state’s persistent offender statute, as the Democrats propose. That statute is so complicated that it is not routinely used, Caligiuri said.
Republicans also said the Democrats’ proposal would allow the court too much leeway in deciding whether to impose tougher sentences.
The Republican plan would grant prosecutors the discretion to seek an automatic life sentence, with-out the opportunity for parole, for conviction on a third violent offense.
Violent offenses would include manslaughter, kidnapping and serious forms of robbery, burglary and sexual assault.
Caligiuri was respectful while discussing his plan with the committee, and complimented an aspect of co-chairmen Sen. Andrew McDonald and Rep. Michael Lawlor’s three-strikes proposal.
“We’re glad this is being recorded,” McDonald said of the praise. He and Lawlor are Democrats.
The co-chairmen drafted what appeared to be the most ambitious and expensive of the proposals.
They called for bonding $260 million to build two new prisons: a 1,000-bed maximum security facility and a medical and mental health center with space for 1,200 inmates.
But Republicans have resisted building more prisons in favor of managing the population and using global positioning technology to monitor inmates released into the community.
Adinolfi’s was the only proposal to include the creation of a parole registry, a list that would allow the public to see which parolees are living nearby. He also would like the state to count repeat minor of-fenses as one major offense on the way to a third violent felony, the trigger for the three-strikes law.
Steven Hayes, one of the defendants in the Cheshire homicides, had committed more than 20 minor burglaries, Adinolfi said, but was never treated as a violent or serious offender.
Reps. Mary G. Fritz and Vickie O. Nardello, Democrats who represent Cheshire, inserted an act clas-sifying home invasion as a violent crime, and Sen. Thomas P. Gaffey, D-Meriden, co-sponsored a meas-ure that would create a full-time pardons and paroles board and restrict the use of re-entry furloughs.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell has said she supports making the parole board full time.
The committee expects to work with Rell’s Sentencing and Parole Task Force to craft compromise legislation in time for a special session in January.
Marilyn Bartoli, a Cheshire friend of the Pe**** who organized an August rally in support of a three-strikes law, stood with the Republicans to urge its passage.
She had stern words for its opponents.
“Go to 300 Sorghum Mill Drive and take a long, hard look,” she said. “It’s not as hard as it looks – it’s about protecting ourselves.”
awittenberg@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2231
HARTFORD – The legislature’s Judiciary Committee considered 15 proposals aimed at improving the criminal justice system Tuesday, four months after the slaying of a mother and her two daughters in Cheshire.
All five lawmakers who represent the town either drafted their own bill or played a role in crafting one of the proposals.
Rep. Alfred C. Adinolfi, R-Cheshire, who said he lives six doors down from where the killings took place, on Sorghum Mill Drive, began the hearing by reading a letter from Dr. William A. Petit Jr., who survived the home invasion in July.
“Words cannot express how sad I am that nothing you will do can undo what happened to my family,” Petit wrote Adinolfi and the committee’s leaders. “It is so urgently important that you, as our legislative body, learn from these awful events and take full advantage of this opportunity to comprehensively change our laws to better protect other innocent members of our society.”
Petit also urged lawmakers to put aside their political differences in the interest of public safety.
Much of the political jockeying took place outside the hearing, which featured a mix of state officials and members of the public.
Senate Republicans held a press conference before the session to hail their proposal, which includes a three-strikes law aimed at locking up repeat violent offenders for life.
"This is meant to go after the most hardened, violent, repeat criminals," said Sen. Sam Caligiuri, a Re-publican who represents Southington and Cheshire and the primary author of his party's three-strikes proposal.
Caligiuri said the Republicans favor passing a separate three-strikes law instead of including the lan-guage in the state’s persistent offender statute, as the Democrats propose. That statute is so complicated that it is not routinely used, Caligiuri said.
Republicans also said the Democrats’ proposal would allow the court too much leeway in deciding whether to impose tougher sentences.
The Republican plan would grant prosecutors the discretion to seek an automatic life sentence, with-out the opportunity for parole, for conviction on a third violent offense.
Violent offenses would include manslaughter, kidnapping and serious forms of robbery, burglary and sexual assault.
Caligiuri was respectful while discussing his plan with the committee, and complimented an aspect of co-chairmen Sen. Andrew McDonald and Rep. Michael Lawlor’s three-strikes proposal.
“We’re glad this is being recorded,” McDonald said of the praise. He and Lawlor are Democrats.
The co-chairmen drafted what appeared to be the most ambitious and expensive of the proposals.
They called for bonding $260 million to build two new prisons: a 1,000-bed maximum security facility and a medical and mental health center with space for 1,200 inmates.
But Republicans have resisted building more prisons in favor of managing the population and using global positioning technology to monitor inmates released into the community.
Adinolfi’s was the only proposal to include the creation of a parole registry, a list that would allow the public to see which parolees are living nearby. He also would like the state to count repeat minor of-fenses as one major offense on the way to a third violent felony, the trigger for the three-strikes law.
Steven Hayes, one of the defendants in the Cheshire homicides, had committed more than 20 minor burglaries, Adinolfi said, but was never treated as a violent or serious offender.
Reps. Mary G. Fritz and Vickie O. Nardello, Democrats who represent Cheshire, inserted an act clas-sifying home invasion as a violent crime, and Sen. Thomas P. Gaffey, D-Meriden, co-sponsored a meas-ure that would create a full-time pardons and paroles board and restrict the use of re-entry furloughs.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell has said she supports making the parole board full time.
The committee expects to work with Rell’s Sentencing and Parole Task Force to craft compromise legislation in time for a special session in January.
Marilyn Bartoli, a Cheshire friend of the Pe**** who organized an August rally in support of a three-strikes law, stood with the Republicans to urge its passage.
She had stern words for its opponents.
“Go to 300 Sorghum Mill Drive and take a long, hard look,” she said. “It’s not as hard as it looks – it’s about protecting ourselves.”
awittenberg@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2231