Connecticut’s new chief state’s attorney sworn in
Connecticut’s new chief state’s attorney was sworn in Friday during a ceremony at the New Haven County Courthouse.
Patrick Griffin, a career prosecutor and most recently the New Haven state’s attorney, was appointed to the role Thursday by the state’s Criminal Justice Commission.
Griffin takes over the role at time when, he said, the “morale of the division was the worst it has been” in his 27 years of employment there, due to a number of challenges, including the recent retirement of Richard Colangelo.
Colangelo, who left the position at the end of March, retired rather than face an investigation that could have led to his firing. Colangelo is accused of hiring the daughter of former Office of Policy and Management Deputy Secretary Konstantinos Diamantis as one of his executive assistants, while Colangelo was trying to get
Diamantis to approve raises for himself and the 13 other state’s attorneys.
In addition to the shadow cast by those accusations, the division faced disruption due to COVID and a wave of retirements, Griffin said during his interview for the position.
“There’s hundreds of years of experience and institutional knowledge that has left and is difficult to replace,” Griffin said.
The moment also offers an opportunity to bring new energy to the division, he said. He also hopes to bring a more uniform approach to sentencing modification. Griffin has been the state’s attorney in New Haven since 2016. Before that, he ran the cold case unit at the chief state’s attorney’s office in Rocky Hill.