Conviction integrity unit expected of new chief state’s attorney
On Thursday, the state’s Criminal Justice Commission interviewed four candidates to fill the remaining year and a half of the term of Kevin T. Kane, who retired as Chief State’s Attorney on Dec. 1. Kane, the longest-serving chief since the office was created in 1973, was appointed to a third five-year term in 2016 and retired after 47 years as a prosecutor, the last 13 as the head of the Division of Criminal Justice. The interviews, conducted in a public meeting of the commission in the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, were intensive and went on for eight hours.
There were four candidates, all of whom have considerable prosecutorial experience: Richard J. Colangelo Jr., the State’s Attorney for the Stamford/ Norwalk judicial district; Kevin D. Lawlor, the Deputy Chief State’s Attorney and previously the State’s Attorney for the Ansonia/Milford judicial district; Erik T. Lohr, Associate Attorney General; and Maureen T. Platt, the State’s Attorney for the Waterbury judicial district.
At the end of a long day of interviews, the commission announced it had selected Colangelo, who has served as the State’s Attorney for the Stamford/Norwalk district since 2015, to succeed Kane as Chief State’s Attorney. He was sworn in on Friday. In a grim coincidence, Colangelo, who has been much in the news lately as the prosecutor in charge of the Jennifer Farber Dulos homicide case, was announced as the commission’s choice only hours after Fotis Dulos, who had been charged with her murder, died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
In the interviews, the four candidates discussed a number of issues related to the organization and administration of the division — the current challenges it faces and its needs and priorities in the years ahead. They also discussed a number of substantive issues pertaining to criminal justice — for example, diversionary programs for youthful offenders, levels of incarceration, officer-involved shootings, and the need for public accountability and prosecutorial consistency across the state’s 13 judicial districts.
And they were asked about possible criminal justice reforms, including one that has gained widespread support across the country over the past decade — creation of a conviction integrity unit.
In recent years, as they have become increasingly aware of the frequency and various causes of wrongful convictions, prosecutors in a number of cities and counties across the country have created such units, the purpose of which is to reexamine the evidence in cases in which there is some reason to believe there was a wrongful conviction. The first such unit was created in Santa Clara County (San Jose) in 2002, then in Dallas County in 2007 and Harris County (Houston) in 2009, and then in quick succession in Manhattan, King’s County (Brooklyn), Cook County (Chicago), San Diego County, Baltimore, Suffolk County (Boston), and the New York Attorney General’s Office in 2010-12. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, there are now 58 such units in the country, 31 of which have conducted investigations that led to a total of 390 exonerations.
Recently, the Smart Justice Campaign of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut sent a 17-question survey to the four finalists for the position of chief state’s attorney and made their answers public. One of the questions was, “Will you commit to fairness and accountability by supporting legislation creating an independent conviction integrity unit to review and investigate innocence claims presented by people convicted of violent offenses?”
While Associate Attorney General Lohr responded only with an ambiguous “No as phrased,” the three prosecutors all expressed their strong support for creation of such a unit. Colangelo, for example, said that while he didn’t think legislation is needed to create such a unit, he supports the creation of one. Indeed, he said, “if I am the CSA I plan on having a conviction integrity unit.”
In creating such a unit, Colangelo will have the support of Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Lawlor, State’s Attorney Platt, and no doubt other state’s attorneys as well. In response to the ACLU question, Platt said, “Yes. I believe that a Conviction Integrity Unit would be an important development to ensuring public confidence in the Criminal Justice System. As ministers of justice, prosecutors should endorse any effort to prevent wrongful convictions.” And in his response, Lawlor noted that the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney has been at work for some time on the creation of such a unit, that he and Kane, along with the State’s Attorneys, had drafted a proposed policy to provide an avenue for incarcerated individuals who claim they were wrongfully convicted to have their cases reexamined, and that last year he had presented Kane with an outline of the possible creation of a conviction integrity unit that would be staffed with experienced prosecutors and inspectors similar to those who staff the office’s Cold Case Bureau.
Creating such a unit would, of course, require some additional funding for the Division of Criminal Justice. But noting that “convicting an innocent person is every prosecutor’s worst nightmare,” he made it clear that he would lobby the legislature and make the case that creation of such a unit is a “critical priority” for the division.
The good news for those such as I, who have called for some time for creation of a statewide conviction integrity unit, is that under Chief State’s Attorney Kane, the Division of Criminal Justice has been doing the necessary planning and preparatory work for creation of such a unit and that, under Chief State’s Attorney Colangelo, such a unit is likely to be created.
In recent years, Connecticut has enacted important legislation designed to prevent wrongful convictions. It has required that confessions to serious crimes be videotaped and has mandated the blind or double-blind administration and sequential presentation of a suspect and fillers in a lineup or photo array in order to minimize eyewitness misidentifications, the single most frequent cause, by far, of wrongful convictions.
And it has a state-level Innocence Project that has worked effectively with the Division of Criminal Justice in reversing a number of wrongful convictions. Creating a conviction integrity unit is clearly on the agenda for the new chief state’s attorney. And that will be a good thing for criminal justice in Connecticut.