Cleanupticut

 

By JEFFREY A. MEYER, Published: October 1, 2006, Hamden, NYTimes

 

CORRUPTION thrives in Connecticut. In recent years, some of our most prominent politicians have been sent to prison, including the former governor and state treasurer, two big city mayors and a state senator. This is to say nothing of their flotilla of staff members and cronies who have joined them in jail for their parts in illicit corruption schemes.

 

The embarrassment continues today. This summer, federal prosecutors convicted a former supervisor at the Connecticut Department of Public Works in connection with a corruption inquiry and garnered guilty pleas from a Bridgeport city worker who took bribes to steer contracts and from two men in a bid-rigging scheme involving the Connecticut Department of Transportation.

 

It’s no wonder the state has received a new nickname: Corrupticut. And it’s a label that will stick as long as the General Assembly refuses to give state prosecutors the investigative subpoena authority they need to pursue complicated cases of public corruption. Indeed, the major corruption cases in the state of recent years have all been led by a small group of federal prosecutors from the United States Attorney’s Office in Connecticut while state prosecutors have stood on the sidelines.

Most of the time, corruption cases are devilishly difficult to develop. A politician on the take can be very good at covering his tracks. Political payoffs are channeled through shell companies and go-betweens who are selected for their loyalty and who depend on the good will and prominent position of their political patrons.

Federal prosecutors succeed because of the subpoena powers of a federal grand jury. Many corruption cases start because of a tip, sometimes anonymous, about illicit activity. A federal prosecutor then uses grand jury subpoenas to compel sworn testimony from witnesses and disclosure of telltale documents, like telephone billing records and bank deposit and withdrawal receipts.

 

But shouldn’t a state prosecutor be dealing with corruption cases involving state employees? The problem is that unlike a federal prosecutor, and unlike prosecutors in many other states, a state prosecutor in Connecticut cannot subpoena documents for investigative purposes. At best, he can apply to a judge for a search warrant, which may be issued only if there is “probable cause,” that is, enough evidence to show that a crime probably occurred. Without the use of subpoenas to follow up on initial tips and investigative leads, most corruption investigations wither on the vine long before probable cause can be established to justify a full-blown search warrant.

Just as important as access to phone and bank records is testimony from reluctant witnesses. Ordinarily, a witness need not answer questions from a law enforcement officer — she can slam the door and tell the officer to go away. But faced with a federal grand jury subpoena, a witness must generally testify under oath about what she knows. Except for rare cases where a state grand jury is empaneled under arcane and cumbersome procedures, Connecticut’s state prosecutors have no similar means to compel witnesses to say what they know.

 

It is not just federal prosecutors who have the power of subpoena. The General Assembly uses subpoena power for its own legislative investigations. The state attorney general also has subpoena power to investigate violations of some civil statutes. And yet state prosecutors don’t have such power, even though criminal corruption is surely more serious than civil misconduct.

 

Last year, the Judiciary Committee considered a subpoena proposal from the chief state’s attorney. The proposal allowed a subpoena to be issued if a prosecutor convinced a state court judge that there were “reasonable grounds,” a standard less demanding than “probable cause,” to believe a crime was committed and that the information sought was “relevant and necessary” to the investigation.

 

The proposal also required formal notice and warnings to any recipient of a subpoena, including a description of the purpose of the investigation, whether the recipient was a target of the investigation and the recipient’s constitutional right not to incriminate himself, to obtain counsel and to ask a court to quash or modify the subpoena. All these safeguards are more than exist now for federal grand jury subpoenas.

 

But the proposal went nowhere. It foundered without a vote before the Judiciary Committee. The chief state’s attorney did not renew his request for subpoena authority during the most recent legislative term. (Disclosure: My father is a member of the Judiciary Committee who supported the chief state’s attorney’s request for subpoena authority.)

 

Today, federal resources are most needed against terrorism and ever more complex financial and cyber crimes that cross state lines. The federal government can no longer be expected to go it alone in policing corruption among state and local government officials. The General Assembly should vest our state prosecutors with the subpoena power they need to combat continuing corruption in Connecticut. It’s a move that makes sense. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/opinion/nyregionopinions/01CTmeyer.html

 

 

Jeffrey A. Meyer, a former federal prosecutor in Connecticut, is an associate professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law and a co-author of “Good Intentions Corrupted: The Oil-for-Food Program and the Threat to the U.N.”