Violent and repeat offenders have a right to a speedy trial, too

Connecticut’s victim advocate, Michelle S. Cruz, is on to a good issue. She notes what seems to be a surge in domestic violence in the state, likely aggravated by a collapsing economy. Cruz also notes that the surge has involved repeat offenders.

But the association of repeat offenders with violent crime is an old problem in Connecticut, a problem state government long has refused to do much about, and Cruz’s solution to the surge in domestic violence is no solution at all. She proposes “immediate arrest of offenders, high bond, house arrest with GPS monitoring, and/or incarceration of those who have violated protective orders or who have a history of violence and are before the court on a new domestic-related charge.�

That is, the victim advocate’s solution is punishment without trial, which is immoral and unconstitutional, since bond is properly used only to insure a defendant’s appearance in court, not to punish in advance of conviction.

The solution to domestic violence is only the solution to all criminal violence and indeed all crimes charged to repeat offenders: speedy trials, with conviction followed by long imprisonment.

Cruz herself should know this. Complaining the other day in New Haven Superior Court that, after two years, the criminal-justice system has not yet brought to trial the two career criminals arrested in the murder of the Petit family in Cheshire, Cruz was rebuked by Judge Richard Damiani. The judge noted that the average time between arrest and trial in capital cases in Connecticut is three years to four years and that the Cheshire case is scheduled to begin jury selection in January, which will be two years and five months between arrest and trial, almost a year faster than the average.

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Of course, a gap of even two years and five months between arrest and trial in any murder, not to mention the worst atrocity in the state in a decade or more, the murder of three utterly innocent and upstanding people in their own home, is still disgraceful. But it is not the fault of anyone handling the Cheshire case but the fault of a system that refuses to prioritize cases, in large part because the law itself refuses to prioritize.

How many drug cases, prostitution cases, zoning cases, insurance cases, traffic cases, and divorces have been processed by Connecticut’s courts since the arrests in the Cheshire atrocity? How many cases not involving violence or the threat of it are handled by Connecticut’s courts while cases of violence or the threat of violence languish on the docket?

Plenty, of course.

State law should forbid the processing of  any court cases ahead of cases involving violence or the threat of violence. But such an improvement in public safety would inconvenience many people, and advocating it would embarrass the General Assembly and the governor, showing them up for enacting and maintaining a lot more law than they are prepared to appropriate money to enforce. So again the victim advocate has settled for posturing that gains her publicity but does nothing for crime victims.

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Advances in technology and compliance with freedom-of-information laws have brought the public intimately close to crime, particularly through recordings of 911 emergency calls to police. Such recordings now are often broadcast on television and radio, posted on the Internet sites of news organizations, and transcribed in newspapers and magazines.

An especially sensational 911 recording was made available recently by the Vernon Police Department — the call received from a terrified woman being menaced by her husband, whom she was divorcing. The recording ends with the gunshots of what turned out to be murder and suicide.

But news organizations in Connecticut seem to have done little with the recording. The murdered woman was an employee of Hartford television station WTIC-TV61, and the station acknowledged during its newscast that it was declining to broadcast the recording because it was too painful for the victim’s colleagues. Vernon’s newspaper, the Journal Inquirer, quoted briefly from the recording but found it too horrible and intrusive to belabor.

And yet, of course, those news organizations and most others would not hesitate to broadcast a recording or publish a transcript of, say, radio communications with an airliner that crashed far away. And fascinated with the horror, viewers and readers who would complain about such detailed reporting of an awful event nearby would lap up such reporting from a safe distance. It is largely a matter not of the horror itself but of how close the horror is to home, where hypocrisy remains “the tribute vice pays to virtue.�

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer.