Sex offenders ask to be removed from public registry if crime-free for decades

In an age of second chances, Connecticut legislators debated Monday over whether sex offenders who have been rehabilitated for decades should no longer be required to be on the state’s public registry.

Advocates said that convicted criminals who were placed on the list should be removed from the registry if they have remained crime-free over the past 25 years. The bill would apply only to those who were convicted before Oct. 1, 1998, which includes more than 800 who were grandfathered onto the list without knowing the full implications of being on a public registry for life. The list was created in 1999, and supporters of Senate Bill 1194 said they should no longer be required to register.

Jason Wasserman, president of the Restorative Action Alliance, told his personal story that he said includes being blocked from extending a term life insurance policy because he was a sex offender.

“I was on the registry in Connecticut for 10 years. It had a huge impact on my life,” Wasserman told legislators at the state Capitol complex. “It affected my wife’s ability to volunteer in the community as people kicked her off committees because of her association with me. It affected my parents. … It affects every aspect of life, and I just had to come out and speak today.”

Other sex offenders on the list have suffered from a wide variety of problems, he said.

“Some have reported being unable to obtain a credit card, and others have shared that their banks have closed their accounts simply because of their status on the registry,” Wasserman said. “Parents and grandparents have been prohibited from attending school functions. Children with parents on the registry have been targeted for abuse by their peers and mistreated by teachers and school administration.”

Wasserman and others testified Monday at the state Capitol complex in front of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee on a variety of bills concerning crime and law enforcement that lasted more than five hours. The committee is facing a deadline of March 31 on the bills, and the measures would be subjected to final approval before the legislative session adjourns in early June.

Sen. Gary Winfield, a New Haven Democrat who co-chairs the judiciary committee, told Wasserman that it took courage to publicly admit that he had been on the registry.

“For a lot of folks, suggesting that they had been on the registry when they don’t have to is a big deal,” Winfield told Wasserman.

Quinnipiac University law student Skylar Seabert later told the story of an offender whose listing on the registry “made it impossible” for him to live a normal life.

Scott Raymond, now a 60-year-old grandfather, said he was placed on the registry after he pleaded guilty and agreed to three years’ probation in 1993 — before the registry was created. He said he had been named “employee of the month” multiple times at a previous job as a bartender but recently has been unable to obtain a job at a Connecticut casino due to his past conviction.

“Human resources will not let me because I am on the registry,” Raymond told legislators. “I should never have been on the registry in the first place. … I need to get off the registry to get on with my life.”

Record traffic fatalities

Lawmakers also debated a measure, known as Senate Bill 1195, that would prevent police from stopping cars for some low-level, secondary traffic violations alone in an attempt to reduce hazardous and aggressive driving behavior. Speeding and running red lights are primary violations, for example, while failing to wear a seatbelt is a secondary violation among more than 600 different infractions under state law.

Rep. Gregory Howard, a Republican legislator who has also spent the past 21 years as a police officer in Stonington, noted that 2022 was the deadliest year on record in Connecticut for traffic fatalities at the same time that traffic stops by police have been down by about 125,000 from their peak, according to state records.

“Enforcement in general is down,” said Kenneth Barone, the associate director of the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy that tracks traffic statistics. “Police should maintain the ability to make an investigative stop.”

Connecticut law covers a huge range of violations, including that a windshield must be “entirely unobstructed” – meaning that drivers with an EZ Pass on the windshield or dice hanging from the rearview mirror are technically in violation of the law, Barone said. Many of those drivers, however, are not stopped for those violations.

Police interrogations

Citing false confessions in high-profile crimes, some lawmakers and advocates called for outlawing deceptive and coercive tactics in police interrogations.

The bill states that any confession “shall be presumed to be involuntary and inadmissible in any proceeding” if deceptive tactics were used to obtain the statement.

Advocates cited an infamous case in Connecticut that involved the arrest in 1989 of Richard A. LaPointe, a mentally disabled man, for the murder of his wife’s 88-year-old grandmother. He was convicted in 1992 for the murder that he said he did not commit, and he served 26 years in prison before the state Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2015.

LaPointe was questioned for more than nine hours in an interrogation that was not recorded, and his supporters have repeatedly cited his case as a miscarriage of justice.

West Hartford police chief Vernon Riddick, representing the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, said since police interrogators might provide incorrect information to a person during an interrogation, the bill should include the words “intentionally and knowingly” in order to allow for a mistake.

“Mistakes do happen, and it should not be unlawful,” Riddick said, noting that virtually all interrogations are now videotaped. “The issue is trying to get facts and the truth, as opposed to getting a confession in the absence of truth. … Suspects lie all the time.”

Howard, a veteran officer, said that suspects often fail to tell the truth.

“They have no obligation to tell us the truth,” Howard said. “They can lie all they want.”

Police accountability law

For years, Republicans have complained that police have been handcuffed by changes in the highly controversial issue of qualified immunity that could lead to personal financial losses. Democrats, though, say that officers should be concerned only for actions that were willful and reckless — and not for simply doing their jobs.

House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford said he supports a bill calling for appeals on civil lawsuits filed on governmental immunity.

Sen. John Kissel, an Enfield Republican who has served in the legislature for more than 30 years, said the accountability law has “had a chilling effect on law enforcement. We’ve seen a reduction in the number of arrests. It’s my understanding that people are concerned about being the first test case.”

Lobbyist Jean Cronin, who represents the school bus companies operating in the state, also called for a change in state policy on police chases that she said currently allows more thefts of catalytic converters. Police officers say they do not take undue risks in chases that could lead to accidents with innocent people on the roads, but some say the converters are stolen in the middle of the night when there are few motorists on the road.

“Thieves know that the police cannot pursue them, and that is part of the problem,” Cronin said. “Even if the police arrive at the bus yard and catch the thieves in the act of stealing the converters, the police cannot pursue the thieves if they take off in a vehicle. Police need the ability to do their jobs, whether through pursuit or new technologies which could provide similar results through the tracking of the suspect’s vehicle. Penalties should also be increased as there is not enough of a deterrent now to keep thieves from taking these devices.”

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com