Chris Powell: Conn. junket in Paris? Another wrongful conviction

Advertisement for Sikorsky S-42 Clipper flying boat from 1937.

Sikorsky Aircraft , based in Stratford, Conn., was established by aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky in 1923 and was among the first companies to manufacture helicopters for civilian and military use. Its UH-60 Black Hawk below.

Headquarters of Pratt & Whitney, the aerospace company, in East Hartford, Conn.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

With about 34,000 of its residents employed in the aerospace industry, Connecticut had good reason to be represented at the Paris Air Show this past week, so Gov. Ned Lamont was there with a delegation of state officials and business leaders.

“Our goal," the governor says, "is to get more products that are made in Connecticut out into the world, and to get more of the world doing business in Connecticut.”

Some time may pass before Connecticut learns whether the excursion was a serious attempt at business development or just a junket.

Besides the concentration of aerospace businesses here, the state's advantages to the industry are said to include its strategic location between New York and Boston, the great life in its suburbs, its skilled manufacturing workforce, and the quality of its products.

Yet business leaders from around the world who come to the air show more for business than junketing may be prepared to inquire beyond the conventional wisdom.

They might ask about the recent inability of Connecticut manufacturers to find qualified people and the growing share of the workforce emerging uneducated from the state's schools and suited only for menial work.

They might ask about the state's high taxes and particularly the recent extension of its 10 percent surcharge on the corporation income tax.

They also might ask about the state's high housing costs and severe shortage of housing for working people. If a foreign company wanted to open a facility in Connecticut with 200 or more employees, exactly where could enough housing be found for them near the new company? Even if the new company was willing to build housing for its employees, would any municipality welcome it or just obstruct it with zoning?

If they face such serious questions in Paris, Connecticut's delegation well might prefer to linger at the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, or any croissant shop.

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Connecticut has another catastrophic and likely expensive wrongful conviction case -- that of Adam Carmon, who served 28 years in prison on a charge of firing a dozen bullets into an apartment in New Haven in 1994, killing a baby and paralyzing her grandmother.

In November Superior Court Judge Jon Alander reversed Carmon's convictions and ordered a new trial. Last week the New Haven prosecutor's office dropped the charges, having concluded that the evidence for them won't stand up a second time -- eyewitness identification that was shaky and ballistics evidence that has been repudiated. Additionally, the judge concluded that the prosecution withheld from the defense evidence suggesting that two purported drug dealers could have done the shooting and that the police failed to pursue other suspects, including a man who confessed and then recanted.

No motive for Carmon to commit the crime was ever offered.

So Judge Alander has dismissed the case, telling Carmon, "The criminal- justice system failed you."

For the 28 years taken from him, Carmon is entitled to file a damage claim against the state and to sue the agencies that investigated and prosecuted him. He probably has at least $5 million coming to him, though few people would exchange 28 years for any amount.

The criminal-justice system also seems to have failed a disturbing number of others in recent years, especially in the New Haven area. Critics point to a dozen other overturned convictions involving complaints of police and prosecutor misconduct from the 1980s through the early 2000s. They want a federal investigation.

Investigation is very much warranted but not by the federal government, now that the U.S. Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have been so corrupted politically.

No, the investigation here should be conducted by Connecticut's own authorities, and particularly by the General Assembly, which has broad authority over the operations of state government, including criminal justice, but seldom investigates or even audits anything, though the other day it asked state agencies to study the urgent matter of adding "non-binary" to the gender identification sections of their license and application forms.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

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