Gov. Ned Lamont on Monday announced the nominations of 20 jurists to serve in positions on Connecticut’s courts.

By Ronni Newton

Gov. Ned Lamont announced multiple judicial nominations on Monday that are being forwarded to the Connecticut General Assembly for approval, including Honorable William H. Bright, Jr. as an associate justice of the Supreme Court and the Honorable Robin L. Wilson as a judge of the Appellate Court, and among the 13 he also nominated to become judges of the Superior Court, three are from West Hartford.

The West Hartford residents who are nominees, all women, include Kaitlin A. Halloran, Angeline Ioannou, and Latonia C. Williams.

Halloran, 41, is a graduate of New York University and obtained her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law. Since the firm she co-founded in 2010, Halloran & Halloran, merged with BBB Attorneys in 2021, she has focused on litigation of complex cases, and has also maintained an active pro bono special education practice assisting families in navigating the system and accessing services,

Ioannou, 55, is a graduate of Sacred Heart University and obtained her Juris Doctor from Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, DE (now Widener University Commonwealth Law School). She has more than 25 years experience in the litigation of complex tort and medical malpractice matters involving wrongful death and catastrophic injury, and is managing partner of the Hartford office of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard and Smith, LLP.

Williams, 41, is a graduate of Howard University and obtained her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law. As a partner at Shipman and Goodwin LLP, her practice focuses on commercial litigation matters in state and federal courts, including commercial bankruptcies, landlord-tenant disputes, and commercial foreclosures. She also serves on the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch Client Security Fund Committee and the board of directors for Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut, Inc.

“Nominating judges to serve on our courts is one of the most important responsibilities of a governor, especially because judges are the final authority on the interpretation of the law and the constitution, and for ensuring that justice is administered fairly and without prejudice,” Lamont said in a statement. “Judge Bright has been an excellent leader of our Appellate Court over these last four and a half years, and he has had an impressive career handling all types of cases both on the trial and appellate levels. Likewise, Judge Wilson is an incredibly well-respected member of Connecticut’s legal community, having served in the Superior Court for more than two decades. I am confident that these nominees each have the high standards and qualifications the people of Connecticut deserve to have serving for them on the bench.”

In addition to the three from West Hartford, the other 10 Superior Court judicial nominees announced by the governor on Monday are:

• David G. Bothwell, 55, of Fairfield
• Tracie C. Brown, 53, of Windsor
• Michael C. D’Agostino, 53, of Hamden
• Jesse Giddings, 43, of North Haven
• Diana M. Gomez, 42, of Easton
• Donald R. Green, 58, of Meriden
• Kevin C. Kelly, 65, of Stratford
• Daniel Shapiro, 58, of Westbrook
• Kevin Shea, 58, of Madison
• Yonatan Zamir, 48, of Woodbridge

According to Monday’s announcement by the governor, there were currently 22 judicial vacancies on the Connecticut Superior Court.

Lamont also is nominating two jurists to serve as family support magistrates (Benedict R. Daigle, 43, of Cromwell and LeeAnn Neal, 39, of Waterbury) and three (Michael L. Anderson, 54, of North Stonington; Christine Conley, 42, of Groton; and Colette Griffin, 66, of Newtown) as administrative law judges on the Workers’ Compensation Commission.

Like what you see here? Click here to subscribe to We-Ha’s newsletter so you’ll always be in the know about what’s happening in West Hartford! Click the blue button below to become a supporter of We-Ha.com and our efforts to continue producing quality journalism.

Police in Connecticut have launched a manhunt for a suspect who opened fire on a pair of kids, striking a 12-year-old multiple times, after the children hit the gunman’s car with a snowball last week.

Officers in Hartford responded to a shooting around 7:15 p.m. Wednesday and discovered the injured 12-year-old, according to Hartford Police.

The victim and their 11-year-old friend had been having a snowball fight outside when one of the snowballs struck a car passing by, police said.

The vehicle circled around to chase the children down and the driver fired a gun at the kids, police said at a news conference on Thursday.

The 12-year-old sustained non-life-threatening gunshot wounds and was taken to Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. The 11-year-old was not injured.

No suspect had been arrested by Sunday and police are continuing to investigate.

Snowballs have proven to incidentally stir trouble for years, even as annual snowfall countrywide has decreased.

In early December, football fans went wild and made it rain snowballs on members of the San Francisco 49ers during a game against the Buffalo Bills on their home turf in snowstorm-laden Buffalo, NY. Bills fans were back at it again in late January during a game against the Kansas City Chiefs.

One town in Wisconsin took a different approach and banned snowball throwing outright.

Earlier this week, a man convicted in the killing of an 8-year-old boy and his mother in Bridgeport in 1999 has been granted clemency by now former president Joe Biden.

Senator Richard Blumenthal was our state attorney general at the time. He was one of many lawmakers shocked by this pardon.

He spoke with NBC Connecticut’s Mike Hydeck about his take on the pardon.

Mike Hydeck: Senator, welcome back. Earlier this week, you talked about how you were attorney general back in 1999 when this case was tried. You said this case actually changed Connecticut laws. How?

Richard Blumenthal: This case changed Connecticut laws because the victims here, an 8-year-old boy and his mom, Karen Clarke, were potential witnesses in a very serious crime. They were murdered so that they could not testify in court, and as a result, Connecticut adopted a witness protection program named after BJ Brown and his mom, Karen Clarke. And I was shocked and appalled that clemency was accorded to the culprit in this case, who was convicted in state court of conspiracy to murder and then in federal court of federal drug crimes, and that’s why I am pushing again for reforms to the pardon system, which led to clemency to Adrian Peeler, the convicted murderer here.

Mike Hydeck: How do we go about changing the pardon power of the president so this doesn’t happen again? It’s clear that he had served time for the state charge and he was still in prison on the federal drug charge, but it seems like, is there a pardon board that overlooks these or does President Biden just get handed one and then he signs it? It seems as if somebody read past the headline, we would have figured this out.

Richard Blumenthal: That’s really the question of the moment, and a very important question. You know, the pardon power in our federal government is accorded absolutely without any checks and balances, to the president of the United States. It is a relic, in a sense, of the pardon power exercised by the monarchy in England, and the founders gave it to the president without any requirements for transparency or accountability. In the state of Connecticut, we have a Board of Pardons and Paroles, 10 people working full time with set criteria relating to the impact on the victim and the opinion of the prosecutors and the severity of the offense. There’s no such board at the federal level, and so it is completely within the discretion of the president whether to accord clemency, commutation of sentences, reprieve for fines. And that’s why I am proposing that we actually impose some guardrails on the president of the United States, requiring an explanation, at the very least, some explanation for why pardon has been accorded, and some notice to the prosecutors. For example, in the Peeler case, the Department of Justice had an opportunity for the victims, the Clarke family, to come forward and present their opinion, their views, on whether there ought to be clemency. So providing some guardrails at the federal level, as we do in Connecticut and other states do at the state level is really critical, and in the long run, I’m proposing a constitutional amendment that would curb or cut this absolute power of the president. It has to be a constitutional amendment because the pardon power is part of our federal Constitution. But I think the time has come for this absolute power on the part of the president of the United States to be eliminated.

Mike Hydeck: Senator, is there any way to revisit the Peeler case now that Biden is out of office? Or is that pretty much a done deal because of the power of the pardon?

Richard Blumenthal: We probably should look into why there was this pardon for Adrian Peeler. But we also should keep in mind that President Trump granted pardons to some 1,500 convicted or accused rioters who assaulted police officers, many of them injuring severely those police officers, and in some cases actually killing, causing their deaths. So the pardon power used to grant clemency to those rioters who cause those kinds of injuries and death is also part of the picture here, and we should move forward to restrict and cut and curb the presidential powers. And at the same time, perhaps look at why the pardon for Peeler was granted. But the answer to your question is, there’s probably nothing to do right now, actually, to reverse that decision, because it has already been made and there’s no review, which again, points the need for reform here.

Mike Hydeck: Senator Blumenthal, we have to leave it there. We’re looking forward to when that legislation is drafted. We’d like to have you back on when it is.