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Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls Ivy & Jeff Grant, with Guest John Rowland, Former Connecticut Governor, Fri., Apr. 5, 2019

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On Friday, April 5, 2019, 9 am ET, when John Rowland, Former Governor of the State of Connecticut who served two Federal prison sentences and is now dedicated to helping formerly incarcerated persons with their reentry, was our guest on Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls Ivy & Jeff Grant – The Voice of CT Criminal Justice. Live on WNHH 103.5 FM New Haven and live-streaming at newhavenindependent.org. Rebroadcast at 5 pm. Sponsored by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven – Now More Than Ever.

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Watch on Facebook Live:

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Former Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland brings the insight and candor of a political leader who has seen great success and has learned exceptional lessons from the challenges faced at the end of his public service career.

Elected to the Connecticut State House of Representatives in 1980 at the age of 23, John Rowland rose rapidly to serve three terms in Congress before being elected the youngest Governor in Connecticut history in 1994 and then re-elected two more times. He was called by the Wall Street Journal “one of our nation’s rising stars”. His public service career resulted in a renaissance throughout the cities of Connecticut. His vision brought the University of Connecticut and all the public universities to the first rate educational facilities they are today. During his years in office Connecticut experienced record budget surpluses, tax reductions, job growth and economic expansion. His focus on the inner cities and cultural investments in the arts helped rejuvenate our communities.

Ok, that’s the good part, now the bad part. After serving for almost 10 years as Connecticut’s Governor he resigned from office, during a federal investigation and served 10 months in a federal prison camp. Years later he hosted “Church and State” a popular radio show on WTIC-AM with Pastor Will Marotti. After almost 5 years on the radio he was convicted on campaign finance violations and spent 15 months in a federal prison camp.

He is now the Development Director for Prison Fellowship Ministry, covering the northeast United States. He is extensively involved in community, ministry services, and still lives in Connecticut with his wife Patty. ____________________

Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls Ivy and Jeff Grant is broadcast live at 9 am (ET) on the first and third Friday of each month from the WNHH 103.5 FM studios in New Haven, live-streamed everywhere at newhavenindependent.org. It is also on live on Facebook Live (video) at https://www.facebook.com/wnhhradio. It is rebroadcast on WNHH at 5 pm the same day. Find all of our shows archived on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/new-haven…/…/criminal-justice-insider. An article about each show is published a few days later in the New Haven Independent (newhavenindependent.org).

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Guests this fall/winter:

Fri., Sept. 9: Kennard Ray, CT Unlock the Vote and Candidate for CT State Legislator
Fri., Sept. 21: Louis L. Reed, National Organizer for #Cut50
Fri., Oct. 5: Sue Gunderman & Beth Hines, CT Reentry Roundtables
Fri., Oct. 19: Venice Michalsen, Assoc. Professor of Justice Studies, Montclair State University
Fri., Nov. 16: Andrew Clark, Director of the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy, Central Connecticut State University
Fri., Dec. 7: Glenn E. Martin, Founder/Consultant of GEM Trainers and Past-President and Founder of JustLeadershipUSA
Fri., Dec. 21: Fernando Muniz, CEO of Community Solutions, Inc., and community leader Rosa Correa.
Fri., Jan. 4: New Years Retrospective Show Looking Back at Past CJI Guests.
Fri. Jan. 18: Peter Henning, Law Prof. at Wayne State University and “White Collar Watch” columnist for the NY Times.
Fri., Feb. 1: Jeffrey Deskovic, CEO of The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation who was Exonerated after Serving 16 Years in Prison
Fri., Feb. 15: Jeffrey Abramowitz, Executive Director for Reentry Services, JEVS Human Services, Philadelphia.
Fri., Mar. 1, Rollin Cook, CT Commissioner of Correction
Fri., Mar. 15: Khalil Cumberbatch, Chief Strategist for New Yorkers United for Justice
Fri., Apr. 5: John Rowland, Former CT Governor
Fri., Apr. 19: Gregg D. Caruso, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning & Co-Director of the Justice Without Retribution Network at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Fri., May 3: Michael Taylor, CEO of Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center in the Greater New Haven area
Fri., May 17: Tarra Simmons, Esq., Attorney & Criminal Justice Reform Advocate, Washington State

Sponsored by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven – Now More Than Ever.
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The First Confidential Online White Collar and Nonviolent Support Group in the United States

If you, a friend, family member, colleague or client are experiencing a white collar or other nonviolent criminal justice issue, Progressive Prison Ministries hosts a confidential online white-collar/nonviolent support group on Monday evenings, 7 to 8:15 pm Eastern, 6 to 7:15 pm Central, 5 to 6:15 pm Mountain, 4 to 5:15 pm Pacific.

This is the first confidential white-collar/ nonviolent online support group in the United States.

This is a huge step in forming a community of individuals and families with white-collar and nonviolent incarceration issues. Our experience shows us that many of us are suffering in silence with shame, remorse, and deep regret. Many of us have been stigmatized by our own families, friends and communities, and the business community. Our goal is to learn and evolve into a new spiritual way of life centered on hope, care, compassion, tolerance and empathy, and then to reach out to offer all those suffering from these issues. In so doing, we share our experiences, feelings and resources to help make the quality of each other’s lives more manageable.

More info: prisonist.org/white-collar-support-group.

New Haven Independent: 16 Years For A Crime He Didn’t Commit

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by Tom Breen, Reprinted from New Haven Independent, Feb. 6, 2019

Jeffrey Deskovic was playing whiffleball with a friend the night his high school classmate was raped and murdered.Despite DNA evidence to the contrary, the state still thought he did it. So did a jury. Deskovic spent 16 years behind bars, until the actual killer’s DNA finally helped clear his name and set him free.

Deskovic told that story of his wrongful conviction and successful exoneration on the most recent episode of WNHH’s “Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls-Ivy and Jeff Grant.”

Now the CEO of the Deskovic Foundation, a nonprofit that has helped overturn seven wrongful convictions and succeeded in advocating for the country’s first Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct in New York, Deskovic was just a 16-year-old sophomore in high school in 1989 when police arrested him for the rape and murder of a fellow classmate in his home town of Peekskill, N.Y.

Initially, Deskovic said, he and his family weren’t concerned about him being found guilty. He knew he hadn’t committed the crime, and pretrial DNA tests of semen found inside the victim didn’t match his own.

“They all thought the system worked,” Deskovic said. “Me being wrongfully convicted was the last thing on anybody’s mind.”

But, as Deskovic has learned over the past three decades, innocence sometimes has little to do with whether or not one is found guilty for a crime.

The medical examiner failed to disclose complaints from surrounding communities about his history of providing untruthful testimony. He also rushed to the grand jury and urged them to find Deskovic guilty even before the results from the DNA test were in.

The public defender representing Deskovic failed to bring up in court the teenager’s alibi, that he had been playing whiffleball in a friend’s backyard, and didn’t even interview the friend Deskovic claimed to have been with.

And the district attorney, eager for a conviction and unwilling to accept that a negative DNA test meant that Dekovic hadn’t in fact raped and murdered the victim, proceeded with the prosecution, and succeeded in getting a guilty verdict from the jury for first-degree rape and second-degree murder.

Besides his family, he said, “everyone else in the community turned on me. Everybody hated me.”

Still just a teenager, Deskovic was sent to a men’s maximum security prison. He spent the next 16 years bouncing between Elmira and Sing Sing, learning law, earning a GED and an Associate’s Degree, and urging his attorneys to keep fighting his case.

The first break in Deskovic’s case came in 1996, and had nothing to do with him. New York created a DNA databank designed to link DNA evidence from crime scenes with offenders. The second break came in January 2006, when the Innocence Project decided to pick up his case and test his DNA using new technology.

The third, and critical, break came in September 2006, when the DNA found inside the high school victim some 16 years earlier was matched with that of Steven Cunningham, who was in prison for a different murder he had committed over a decade prior. Cunningham eventually confessed to committing the crime for which Deskovic was locked up. Later in September 2006, Deskovic was released at the age of 32.

Since then, he has started his own nonprofit, helped overturn seven wrongful convictions, and worked on a campaign to establish a commission in New York to provide independent oversight of prosecutors.

“One of the most common elements that runs through many wrongful conviction cases is prosecutorial misconduct,” he said. That can be anything from withholding evidence of innocence to withholding evidence that has to do with witness credibility to making inflammatory statements over the course of the trial.

Sometimes misconduct stems from political ambition, he said, a prosecutor’s eagerness to get a conviction at all costs. Sometimes “it becomes kind of like a game, like wins and losses,” he said.

Now about to graduate from law school, and scheduled to take the bar this summer, Deskovic said he has no interest in slowing down his advocacy for the wrongfully convicted.

“Between now and when I drop dead,” he said, “I’ll be doing this work.”

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