Suzio, Store Clerk’s Family To Petition To Suspend Early Release Program

State Sen. Len Suzio and the family of a convenience store clerk killed during a June robbery will be starting a petition calling for the state to suspend a program that allows inmates to earn credits toward an early release from prison.

Suzio

Suzio and the victim’s family will launch the petition drive Friday afternoon outside of the EZ Mart on East Main Street in Meriden, where 70-year-old Ibrahim Ghazal was shot on June 27.

Frankie Resto, the man accused of killing Ghazal, was able to earn 199 days of credit while behind bars for a 2006 robbery conviction. Resto was released from prison in April and Suzio said Wednesday that those credits might have allowed him to walk free sooner than he should have.

Suzio’s office did not immediately say how many signatures the Republican state senator hopes to collect.

On Wednesday, Suzio, along state Victim Advocate Michelle Cruz and a member of the group Survivors of Homicide, called for the program’s suspension, saying violent criminals should not be eligible for credits toward an early release.

An official with Malloy administration has said that the credits did not enable Resto to be released early and said that Resto had been on probation at the time of the June shooting. The administration also says the program can’t be “suspended” as Suzio wants because it is a part of the state’s sentencing law.

Resto is currently facing a felony murder charge and is in jail on $3.1 million bond.

Republican and Democratic state lawmakers have long been at loggerheads over the credits program, which has allowed nearly 7,600 inmates to be released early since its inception.

Opponents such as Suzio say the program allows inmates to earn credits for classes that aren’t rehabilitative or which the inmates have not completed. They also say that it gives too many violent criminals a chance to walk free before they should.

The 2011 legislation only excluded from eligibility people convicted of murder, felony murder, arson murder, home invasion, first-degree aggravated sexual assault and capital felonies.

But Democratic supporters of the law have said that criminals with violent pasts need to be eligible to participate in the credits program because those inmates are the ones most in need of rehabilitation. They say the program does require inmates to complete the courses and be evaluated by instructors and they say it has led to lower rates of violence within prison walls.