The Peter Reilly-Barbara Gibbons Murder Case: A Chronology

A grave injustice occurred in Litchfield County, Connecticut, beginning on September 28, 1973, when Peter Reilly, 18, was arrested and subsequently coerced by State Police into falsely confessing to -- and was later wrongfully convicted of -- the grisly murder of his mother, Barbara Gibbons. Below, and reproduced here as part of the historical record, is an update and timeline of events as they appeared in the Lakeville Journal on March 17, 2005:

Connecticut Commissioner of Public Safety Leonard Boyle has agreed to give Peter Reilly access to state police files that could help him discover who murdered his mother, Barbara Gibbons, after more than 30 years. For decades, Reilly himself was the prime suspect for the police – in part because, after two days of interrogation without sleep, food or an attorney, the 18-year-old youth was induced to sign a confession saying he killed and sexually assaulted his mother. Reilly was not convicted of the crime but his name was never completely cleared, either. With the help of journalist Donald Connery, a Kent resident, and The Lakeville Journal, Reilly has been able at last to get access to the police files on the case.

[Photo at left of Peter Reilly speaking in 2005 at Noble Horizons by yours truly]

Searching through those files is likely to be a time-consuming endeavor, though. In 1983, The Lakeville Journal ran a chronology of the events up to the point of the investigation. The introduction to that listing notes that, "No other criminal case in Connecticut history has been so thoroughly investigated by so many people for so long a time ... State's Attorney Dennis Santore speaks of the principal investigative file on the case as something occupying not filing cabinets but whole closets."

That 1983 special section also noted that, "In the process, however, there has been much public confusion about what happened, and who did what to whom, and why the case went on and on like an Icelandic saga ... So many were the events and so mountainous the data that even insiders and diligent observers often lost their way."

To help readers understand the scope of the investigation and trial, The Lakeville Journal offers this abbreviated version of that chronology:

Rowland's Death Penalty Wish

Sometimes a discredited politician says something so idiotic and hypocritical that it takes your breath away. To wit, when former Gov. John Rowland called current Gov. Dannel Malloy a "pathological liar" over the summer.

Now Johnny is back (he's always back, isn't he?). In an interview broadcast this morning on Fox 61's The Real Story, the convicted felon waxed philosophical on the subject of capital punishment in the wake of the conviction of Petit family killer and rapist Joshua Komisarjevsky.

Rowland trotted out the usual talking points about how putting convicted killers to death was a matter of "justice." Really? Rowland complaining about bringing wrong-doers to justice is a little like Teddy Kennedy complaining that our criminal justice system favors the rich.

To be sure, Rowland isn't a violent criminal. But only the most ardent of Rowland's defenders would really insist that "justice" was done when he pleaded guilty to depriving the public of honest service and spent a little more than a year in the pokey.

As Bill Curry has pointed out, there were so many other matters Rowland might have gone to prison for besides the Bantam Lake cottage: the illegal $220 million loan from the Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority to Enron, the sale of his Washington, D.C., condo at an inflated price, the free vacations and travel, or taking bribes in exchange for state contracts. But the plea bargain worked out by Rowland's lawyer resulted in the state essentially calling it quits on trying to nail Rowland for anything else. So much for "justice." Ugh.

Now to the substance of Rowland's remarks. My main objections to capital punishment are twofold. First, I'm no Don Connery but I do have a history of awareness of and advocacy for the wrongfully convicted. If someone such as Falls Village's Peter Reilly is unjustly convicted and evidence later arises that clears him, then we can always give him his freedom back. Not so if the inmate in executed. Why Rowland insisted that he hasn't seen "any evidence" of wrongful executions, I do not know. A quick Google search turned up plenty of credible cases.

Secondly, and most importantly, the state should never be in the position of deciding who dies and who lives. When the government gets in the business of murdering its own citizens, we should all be ashamed — and terrified. Rowland's comparison to the government killing people in war is specious. The rules governing war are far different from those governing our criminal justice system. Isn't that one of the reasons President Obama hasn't closed Guantanamo and sent Kalid Sheik Mohammed to Manhattan to be tried in a federal court? Enemy combatants shouldn't be treated like common criminals.

If anything is more barbaric than Komisarjevsky's murder and mayhem, it's state-sanctioned murder. Here's hoping Connecticut never executes another person again.

Three Strikes For California's Prisons

As an observer of the United States Supreme Court, I watched with interest as the court's liberal wing (along with swing vote Anthony Kennedy) recently upheld two class-action suits claiming California's prisons are overcrowded and provide inadequate medical and psychiatric care. The high court ruled the state must reduce its prison population by a staggering 33,000 inmates.

While my instincts tell me the high court has no business in such matters, the fact remains that California's prisons are indeed overcrowded, despite the fact the state alone has 33 prisons and a budget of about $12 billion. Why are the state prisons breathtakingly expensive? Some of it has to do with the ridiculous Three-Strikes law and some of it has to do with bloated contracts for the union guards who support that same law.

But that is neither here nor there. What I hope this case brings is a renewed debate in this country about incarceration in general. Can there be any doubt that we send far too many people to prison for too long for relatively minor offenses?

In fact, I would go one step farther and question the whole notion of incarcerating non-violent offenders. Is sending them to prison effective? Based on the fact that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, I'd say no. The U.S has 5% of the world's population but fully one quarter of all the world's inmates. And we have a crime rate that, depending on whose statistics you trust, ranges from average to among the world's worst.

Maybe — just maybe — a different approach would save taxpayers a lot of money and provide a different outcome. Or am I just dreaming?

Penis-gate

My latest for CTNewsJunkie.com.

What would you think if you had a state senator who said she thought a defendant in a multiple murder trial should be hanged "by his penis from a tree out in the middle of Main Street?"

The answer is pretty obvious but what I'm trying to get at in this week's column is whether emotion should play a role, not only in politics, but in the actual formation of public policy.

The rise of emotion in politics and governance is growing. And I think it's dangerous.

They Have Done The Deed

Osama bin Laden is gone. Ding dong, the wicked terrorist kingpin is dead.

I give President Obama credit where it's due. Despite campaign promises to get out of the Afghanistan region with all due speed, he quickly realized how important it was to hold firm in the face of a severe threat. Now you would think that the assassination of OBL would be the perfect pretext to withdraw from the region ASAP. But I don't think he will.

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the reason we remain in Afghanistan is Pakistan. The latter nation possesses nuclear weapons but has millions of Islamic fanatics, including most of the Taliban that used be in Afghanistan. If the radicals take over that country, we and India (a key ally in the region) could be in a lot of trouble. Standing by next door sends an important message to Pakistan that we're ready to act if need be. And that's an important message, given the revolutionary climate currently prevailing in the Middle East.

Heck, even if the current regime stays in power in Pakistan, we could be toast. Evidently, the 3,000 SF home OBL was living in was only 30 miles north of Islamabad and a stone's throw away from a Pakistani military installation. The Pakistan government, or large factions in its military, had to know OBL was there.

Leave it to others to find humor in this. My friend John Pollard reports a great Facebook posting: "Osama should have been caught alive and continuously made to go through airport security for the rest of his life."

As someone who recently received a full 10-minute shakedown by Bahamian airport security in Nassau, I can definitely relate ...

Don't Trust The Cops To Police Themselves

My latest for CTNewsJunkie.com. Who investigates the police when officers are suspected of wrongdoing? The police, that's who. Am I alone, or is something wrong with this picture?

Recent developments in Connecticut have served to drive home the point that it's not fair to citizens (or, for that matter, to the police themselves) to have cops looking into charges of malfeasance in their own ranks.

Wiki Crimes? No Laughing Matter ...

Update 6 a.m. Tuesday: CNN is reporting that Assange has been arrested in London on sex crimes charges.

But leave it to SNL to try anyway.

I've held off commenting on the WikiLeaks scandal, mostly because it's so complex that I'm not sure I could do it justice with the little time I have available for blogging. But I'll try anyway.

Julian Assange has developed quite a following and no doubt fancies himself a hero for releasing secret U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic documents into the public domain. Two of my friends, for example, have urged their friends on Facebook to join pro-WikiLeaks groups or donate money to the organization. I respect both of these people, but fail to see how the release of these documents helps the case for what Time magazine calls "WikiLeaks' war on secrecy."

As a former reporter and freedom-of-information advocate, I support the idea that we should err on the side of the sunshine. But you do reach a point where the sunshine, in the case of the WikiLeaks Afghanistan document dump, irreparably harms U.S. interests by exposing the identities of valuable intelligence operatives who could be killed in reprisal.

Or, in the case of the recently released diplomatic cables, it will likely inhibit candid communication among diplomats for fear that their frank assessments will end up on the front page of The New York Times. How could anyone think that exposing our intelligence sources to death, or putting a chilling effect on the exchange of ideas, is a good thing?

I tend to agree with the those who say that Assange should be brought up on criminal charges. But the problem is that laws on publishing classified material are murky. Moreover, Assange is not a U.S. citizen and does not reside here. And persuading a sovereign nation to extradite him is highly problematic, especially if the alleged crimes are considered political in nature.

So we'll probably just have to live with this fellow unless we want to dispatch an assassin to put a bullet between his eyes. Oh, I forgot. That option is no longer available, thanks to the Ford administration.

Aim At The Real Culprit

Great article in Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller today. By now, you've probably heard that the federal government is considering introducing technology into new cars that would disable cell phones when used in a running automobile?

Now, while the increase in road deaths caused by mindless cell phone drivers is indeed troubling, what do you think is the number-one cause of distracted driving? Alcohol? Unruly children? Falling asleep at the wheel? A dropped cigarette? Stinging insects in your front seat?

Nope, according to a 2009 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study, eating and/or drinking in the car causes 80% of all car accidents. Not just 80% of distracted driving accidents, but 80% of all auto accidents. That's right, the worst offenders on the highway have just emerged from the drive-thru at Dunkin Donuts and Taco Bell, not happy hour at Applebee's.

I point this out to ask the obvious question: Why the intense focus on electronic gadgets when the elephant in the room is right in front of us? Why don't we make eating/drinking in the car illegal? Oh, right. Many of the people who want to ban phone use in the car are the same people who like to pull on their beloved Starbucks on the way to the office.

Lawmakers are great at rationalizing, but it would take a verbal contortionist to explain this one away.

On The Foolishness of Hate Crime Laws

Thank you, Richard Cohen, for this eloquent piece on the sheer lunacy of hate crime laws. Why must we criminalize the thoughts of people who commit physical crimes? It serves no purpose other than to offer more protection to one class of people than another.

Sometimes the absurdity of hate crimes laws is revealed. Remember the case of James Byrd, the black man from Texas who was chained to a truck and barbarically dragged to his death by three white men? That crime, already a capital offense, led to the passage of hate crimes laws in Texas over the principled objection of then-Gov. George W. Bush.

For that stand, the NAACP fiercely criticized Bush and implied he was a racist. Ironically, two of the three murderers were sentenced to death and the third to life in prison. What would hate crime laws have accomplished?

It seems to me this whole notion of increasing punishment for crimes committed against certain classes of people is downright un-American. It makes us feel better but it accomplishes nothing:

Hate-crime laws combine the touching conservative belief in the unerring efficacy of deterrence (which rises to its absurd and hideous apogee with executions) with the liberal belief that when it comes to particular groups, basic rights may be suspended.

But don't dare say that or you will be called a bigot, a sexist, a homophobe -- even if you believe in laws that will put the perpetrators to death. Oh, I forgot. Lots of people who believe in hate crimes laws are against capital punishment.

Do the crime, then do the time.