Allan Appel Photo
David Strollo (right) & Norman Pattis.
While real bullets flew outside in New Haven, a state prosecutor who runs the “gun court” in town and a longtime defense attorney engaged in a verbal duel — over whether mandatory sentences for gun possession and other crimes enhance society’s safety or ruin young lives.
“I’m doing 215 gun possession [cases] a year. Almost all go to jail,” said Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney David Strollo.
Then he reprised the most recent eruption of violence: “Today nine shootings in the city of New Haven [over several days], one dead. This is enough for a year. For the year 70 shootings and 13 dead.”
Pattis replied: “David recites these chilling statistics, and we’ve had these gun courts, and everything’s the same.”
Pattis.
Pattis said that’s because, in part, of the system of mandatory minimum sentences that require a judge to sentence first-time gun possession offenders to a year behind bars. If you’re a felon and you possess a gun, that’s two years. At the very least.
The polite, passionate exchange took place at the Stetson Branch Library on Dixwell last Wednesday night. It was part of a program organized by criminal justice advocate Barbara Fair and her My Brother’s Keeper organization.
The idea was to have the lawyers talk about the realities of what young kids face in the criminal justice system when they pick up a gun.
Hearing parents’ fears about the easy access to guns in New Haven, Pattis left the forum reexamining the complexities of the issue. “There’s blood on the streets in the town of New Haven, and frightened parents want answers now. I can’t say that I blame them; summer has not even begun, and already the body count is climbing,” he later wrote in a column. Read that column here.
“I hope you parents will convey this to your kids,” Fair (pictured) said to the adults present at the Stetson forum.
Three gun-bearing crimes that meet the state’s definition of a serious armed criminal will land a person in jail for a minimum mandatory 15 years, with little discretion on the part of the judge to weigh details of the case, biography of the offender, age, or mitigating circumstances.
The discussion followed Fair’s screening of “Mandatory Minimum,” a gripping documentary about a 19-year old who is sentenced to 15 years after his third gun offense. In the film, he stands up and shouts at his attorney, “I can’t do 15 years.”
Under mandatory minimum laws, a judge has no discretion to consider the defendant’s age, the fact that he has a daughter to support, or the fact that one of his priors occurred as a juvenile.
Strollo said he and his colleagues show such films and invite ex-offenders who turned their lives around to give talks as part of an initiative called Project Safe Neighborhoods. He does it in collaboration with his prosecutorial colleagues at the 121 Elm St. courthouse on the second and last Tuesday of every month at 4 p.m.
They want to roll out the program to more venues, to the kids who are in danger of picking up a gun and in a fateful, impulsive moment alter their lives forever, usually for the worse.
That’s why he was at Stetson Library Wednesday night. He evoked almost a golden age of criminality when kids took out their beefs about money or girls by fracturing their noses instead of their lives. “Why not have fights [if there must be violence]? I’ll throw it out.”
Strollo wasn’t really encouraging broken noses. His point was that with the mandatory minimums for guns, there is little discretion on the part of judges, or inclination on his part as a prosecutor, to give people a break.
Pattis recalled growing up in the 1970s in a tough Detroit neighborhood with a dad whose profession was “armed robber.” Dad evaded capture. He changed his life, and sired the child who grow up to become a William Kunstler of New Haven.
Pattis suggested that had his dad been locked away for good, he would have never been able to become that decent father.
Prosecutor Strollo said he encountered more and more 17-year-olds and younger criminals facing serious charges. If the offenses involve drug use, he tries to get kids into alternative-to-jail programs. He takes a harder line on guns, in order to protect society.
“I don’t see the utility of mandatory minimums,” Pattis parried. “I see lives destroyed. No person is the sum total of their worst moments.”
Yes, try to get guns off the streets, he agreed. “But the mandatory minimums are only creating a subculture whose result is when they get out, it’s round two with guns.”
Tyronda James & Sherrick Johnson, whom she’s helping apply for a job
Re-entry Roundtable member and life skills educator Tyronda James rued the fact that “you can get guns [in New Haven] easier than candy. Why isn’t the seller of guns prosecuted like the seller of crack?”
“You make a compelling case, but get your lawmakers [to change the law],” Pattis repleid.
“I’m not a fan of warehousing people. The state isn’t eager to throw people in jail,” replied Strollo. But “tell me a better system.”
Robyn Hayes responded: “Instead of sentencing young boys to jail, send them to the military.” She suggested that an absence of structure and fathers could be compensated for in uniform.
Strollo said he likes the idea.
Pattis agreed too, but offered a “but”: In the 1960s lots of kids with checkered records were sent to Vietnam to get shot up, but today it’s different. “The military has strict felony waiver rules,” he said.
James said getting people more jobs would cut down on the crime in the first place. She said on her own and through the Roundtable she has already convinced Stop & Shop and Dunkin’ Donuts to hire people with criminal records. She’s working on Walgreens and Walmart.
“We would much rather prevent the crime than prosecute after the fact,” Strollo said.
Then he asked James if she would come speak at his Project Safe Neighborhood meeting.
When she said yes, he fished into his briefcase and immediately handed her his card.