CT deputy chief state's attorney to retire after 3 decades of prosecutions
Lawlor has held the position as chief of operations for the Division of Criminal Justice since 2018 and supervised prosecutors involved in appeals, cases involving multiple jurisdictions, civil litigation, housing complaints, Medicaid fraud and other matters.
Earlier in his career, Lawlor was state's attorney for the Ansonia Milford district for a dozen years. Before that he was an assistant state's attorney
'Deputy Chief State's Attorney Lawlor has served the people of Connecticut with distinction and honor for three decades,' Chief State's Attorney Patrick J. Griffin said.
'As a State's Attorney, he served the Ansonia/Milford Judicial District with integrity, dedication and commitment to upholding the law, displaying exemplary leadership that continued during his tenure as Deputy Chief State's Attorney.'
Supreme Court Justice Andrew J. McDonald, chairman of the criminal justice commission, thanked Lawlor for 30 years of employment.
'From his first days as a prosecutor in courtrooms throughout the state, to his recent years as one of the Division's top administrators, he has proven himself to be a dedicated and distinguished public servant committed to seeking justice for the people of this state,' McDonald said.
The division said it is accepting applications for Lawlor's position.
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American states, not the federal government, draw the lines of districts that send representatives to the House of Representatives, and following the census every decade state legislatures redraw the lines to take into account population growth or decline. To increase the chances of electing members of their own party, state legislators often draw bizarrely-shaped districts, with extensions bypassing members of the rival party to loop in likely supporters of their own party. The term 'gerrymander' originated in the early 19th century with this kind of cynical partisan congressional redistricting. In 1812, the Massachusetts legislature drew a district which, according to critics, resembled a salamander. Although Governor Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, accepted the redistricting plan reluctantly, claiming it was 'highly disagreeable', the contorted district was named a 'Gerry-mander' in his dubious honour. 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The extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the State or political subdivision is one circumstance which may be considered: Provided, That nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population. [emphasis added].' While the complete absence of any elected officials belonging to racial minorities might well be evidence of a violation of the law, the Voting Rights Act does not create a right for minority politicians to have districts drawn to give them safe seats. As in the case of race-based affirmative action in general, racial gerrymandering has been practised for more than half a century in defiance of the plain language of the law. Ironically, conservative Republicans in the South teamed up with black Democrats in support of racial gerrymandering for their own selfish reasons, beginning in the 1970s. Some Republican legislatures used a strategy of 'packing' – drawing lines to pack black voters into black-majority districts, while trapping white Democrats as powerless partisan minorities in Republican-majority districts. At the same time, some activists sacrificed the interests of the Democratic Party in winning congressional majorities to the goal of electing as many black Democrats in safe, gerrymandered districts as possible. When I worked for a white liberal Democrat in the Texas legislature in the 1970s, I was told that Texas Republicans had donated large sums of money to black legislators and activists to help them draw black-majority districts. The Democratic Party soon suffered as a result of racial gerrymandering, in Texas and in the House of Representatives. Thanks to racial gerrymandering as well as partisan gerrymandering, Republicans have dominated both houses of the Texas legislature since 2003, freezing out Texas Democrats. In the mid-term elections of 1994, Republicans led by Newt Gingrich recaptured the US House of Representatives for the first time since the 1950s. Not a single black Democrat lost in that election, thanks to their safe districts. But the loss of seven seats held by white Democrats thanks to racial gerrymandering gave Republicans the majority. At the time, David Bositis of the Joint Centre for Political and Economic Studies declared: 'Over the last two elections, the Democrats have lost as many as 15 seats because of majority black redistricting.' Without the loss of those seats, Democrats would have retained the House in 1994 by a margin of 218-216 and Gingrich would have been the frustrated House Minority Leader, not the Speaker of the House. Racial gerrymandering, then, might serve the interests of minority politicians but not necessarily the interests of minority voters. 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