The New York Times-20080124-Connecticut Toughens Law Against Home Invasions
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Connecticut Toughens Law Against Home Invasions
Full Text (756 words)Six months after a deadly home invasion in the town of Cheshire shattered confidence in the state's criminal justice system, legislators have overwhelmingly approved a bill to shore up the way Connecticut deals with offenders.
Working into early Wednesday morning, the Senate and then the House of Representatives approved a measure that would classify home invasions as a new Class A felony, punishable by a minimum of 10 years in prison. They also ratcheted up the penalty for burglaries committed at night by upgrading them to a Class B felony, punishable by a minimum of five years.
The bill defines a home invasion as unlawful entry of an occupied dwelling with intent to commit a crime, and either trying to commit a felony against the occupant or being armed.
But lawmakers, meeting in special session, stopped short of approving what is known as the three-strikes law, which was favored by Gov. M. Jodi Rell and other leading Republicans. It would have carried an automatic sentence of life in prison for violent offenders, eligible for review only after 30 years.
Governor Rell said she was prepared to sign the bill despite her disappointment that it omitted the three-strikes measure, and added that she would press for passage of that provision in the legislative session that begins on Feb. 6.
It's the right thing to do, she told reporters on Wednesday.
Democrats, who hold veto-proof majorities in the Senate and House, generally oppose three-strikes provisions, which limit the discretion of judges. Party leaders contend that streamlining the state's existing persistent-offender laws, as the bill does, would make those statutes more useful in prosecuting career criminals.
One of the Democrats who crossed party lines and voted in favor of the three-strikes provision, State Senator Thomas P. Gaffey of Meriden, represents Cheshire, in central Connecticut, where the home invasion that prompted the new measures occurred on July 23, leaving Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters dead.
Mr. Gaffey said he found the proposed amendment more palatable than California's three-strikes law because it would require all three offenses to be violent crimes, not just felonies, to mandate the longer sentence.
This is not a case where the offenders were denied the chance to rehabilitate themselves, he said after the vote. This is about the most dangerous violent felony offenders.
In a recent interview, Dr. William A. Petit Jr., the lone survivor of the home invasion in which the rest of his family was killed, said that he found it beyond belief that anyone could oppose a long prison term for a person convicted of committing violent crimes on three occasions.
If you haven't figured it out yet, then you probably won't, and you should not have the right to remain in civilized society, Dr. Petit said.
Although many lawmakers failed to see it his way, all 36 senators voted unanimously on Tuesday night to approve the rest of the package, and the House followed with a 126-to-12 vote in favor early Wednesday. Nearly all the opposition came from the Black and Latino Caucus, which had criticized the bill as a feel-good measure that would disproportionately harm minorities and do little to fight crime.
After several months of fact-finding and hearings, led by the governor and leading lawmakers, a consensus emerged around several central features of the bill, including one that replaces the part-time Board of Pardons and Paroles with a full-time body beginning in July, adds a psychologist and assigns two victim advocates to the board staff.
The bill also forbids the parole board to release any inmate without having the applicant's complete file. In the case of Joshua Komisarjevsky, one of the two men charged in the Cheshire slayings, the board did not have the benefit of a 2002 sentencing transcript in which a judge labeled the defendant a calculated, cold-blooded predator.
The bill also requires the state to design an information system that will make it easier for state and local authorities to share information about defendants, and authorizes expanded use of electronic bracelets and other devices when monitoring newly released offenders.
During the long debate, some lawmakers complained that the bill upgraded the classification for burglaries committed at night to a Class B offense but left daytime burglaries, even those involving occupied homes, a Class C offense.
There are so many seniors and disabled people who are at home during the day who are vulnerable, said State Senator Edith G. Prague, a Democrat of Columbia. Treating all home burglaries alike, she said, would make this a better bill.
