Thread: Family, officials angry accused Norwich killer wasn't deported

By Adam Benson The Bulletin

Posted Jul. 14, 2015 at 10:27 PM
Updated Jul 14, 2015 at 10:32 PM

Jean Jacques, convicted of attempted murder and serving a 17-year sentence, had a marker in his prisoner file. Detainer: Immigration.

To Connecticut authorities, that meant when Jacques was released from prison on Jan. 16, it was into the custody of the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE. Jacques’ crimes, which included the illegal use of a pistol during a 1996 Norwich shooting that left one dead and one injured, qualified him for deportation to his native Haiti.

But that never happened. Jacques was released from prison and returned to Norwich. And six months later, he was arrested and charged with the brutal June 15 stabbing death of Casey Chadwick, a 25-year-old city resident. Chadwick’s body was found stuffed in the closet of her Spaulding Street apartment.

When he was arraigned in Chadwick’s death on June 25 in Norwich, Jacques told Judge Kevin McMahan he was not a U.S. citizen.

“You had a murder conviction and you weren’t deported? OK,” McMahan said in apparent surprise, according to The Bulletin’s coverage of the arraignment.

Others are surprised, and angry, that Jacques remained in the United States after his release from prison.

“If that guy got deported like he should have been, I wouldn’t be going through this horrendous pain I’m in right now,” Chadwick’s mother, Wendy Hartling, said. “My daughter should be with me right now.”

In an emailed response to questions by The Bulletin, ICE spokesman Shawn Neudauer said federal privacy laws prohibit him from discussing specific terms of Jacques’ case and was unable to respond further by deadline.

“We have a victim of a homicide in the meantime, and it’s a shame,” Norwich Police Chief Louis J. Fusaro Sr. said. “It’s pretty obvious if he was deported, this wouldn’t have happened.”

McMahan set his bail at $1 million cash only and transferred his case to Part A New London Superior Court, which handles the most serious crimes.

Dan Barrett, legal director at the ACLU of Connecticut, said detainers — which are essentially requests made by ICE to law enforcement agencies to temporarily hold a person — do not carry the same weight as arrest warrants.

“Just like the feds, any kind of official needs a reason to hold somebody. It’s not all that unusual for a state or municipal government to say ‘no,’ because the guy could sue,” Barrett said.

But Fusaro said that he was not notified when Jacques was released from prison. State officials say they followed protocol upon Jacques’ release, but did not have authority to determine his eligibility to stay in the country.

“He was released to ICE. ICE had a detainer, so he was released to them,” said Karen Martucci, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Correction. “Correction has no control over his release or whether he was deported. He was managed according to parole conditions set by the Board of Pardons and Parole.”

Mike Lawlor, undersecretary for the state Office of Policy Management’s criminal justice division, said Tuesday Jacques appeared to fit all the criteria that would make him suitable for deportation.

“I’d like to know what ICE’s explanation for it is. The policy they articulate is they target dangerous, violent individuals for priority. And if this guy doesn’t meet that definition, I don’t know who does,” Lawlor said. “ICE had some options, and they can explain for themselves why they didn’t use them, but we handed him over for the purposes of deportation.”

According to U.S. immigration law, aliens can be deported for a number of offenses, including crimes of moral turpitude (murder, rape, etc.) if they are committed within five years after coming to the country — 10 years if the offender has a green card.

Jacques reportedly arrived in the United States in 1992.

Other reasons for deportation include multiple criminal convictions, aggravated felony, failure to register as a sex offender, violating drug laws, certain firearms offenses including illegal possession, domestic violence or abuse and drug abuse or addiction.

“Detainers are critical for ICE to be able to identify and ultimately remove criminal aliens who are currently in federal, state or local custody,” the agency says on its website. “ICE relies on the cooperation of our state and local law enforcement partners in this effort.”

Barrett, who spoke to The Bulletin about ICE protocols in general and was not familiar with the details of Jacques’ case, said the agency, like many others, is hamstrung by international law and a lack of resources.

“ICE has nowhere near the resources necessary to go after all those people every year, and so they pick and choose. And I think it's very hard to predict who’s going to commit murder,” he said. “Who gets deported and who doesn’t is based on a whole thicket of things.”

New London State’s Attorney Michael Regan, who helped prosecute Jacques in 1997, said his office does not control the residency status of individuals.

“I wouldn't speculate on why he wasn't deported. State courts have no role in these decisions,” he said.

According to ICE’s website, its Enforcement Removal Operations unit in fiscal year 2014 removed 315,943 people from the United States. That included criminals, people re-entering the country illegally after already being removed and immigration fugitives.

Fusaro said authorities were focused on bringing charges against Jacques for Chadwick’s death, regardless of his citizenship.

“We were more interested in getting him off the street. That was our goal as soon as we realized who we believed committed the crime,” Fusaro said. “That's why we did the (undercover) drug deal within three hours afterwards, because that's when we realized this guy is a good suspect.”

Norwich police arrested him on a drug-selling charge later the same day Chadwick’s body was found, keeping him in custody while they continued to investigate the killing.

At the time of Chadwick’s death, Jacques was on parole after being convicted in 1997 of attempted murder and serving a more than 17 years of a 16-20-year prison sentence. He was released from prison Jan. 16 and was working at an East Lyme restaurant as a cook and dishwasher.

Jacques was convicted of attempted murder for a Feb. 4, 1996, attack in the parking lot of a Norwich apartment complex. In 1997, Jacques was acquitted in the shooting death of Fresnel Eugene, but convicted of shooting of Nadia Joseph, who was shot in the side of the head and survived. Jacques was also found guilty of carrying a pistol without a permit.

Joseph, who now lives in New York, told The Bulletin in a story printed Tuesday that the shooting was over drugs and that Jacques was a drug dealer.

Joseph told The Bulletin she had seen Jacques since his release on the streets of Brooklyn, N.Y. Joseph said she was afraid of Jacques.

“Of course I am,” she said. “He has connections, and he’s a murderer."

http://www.norwichbulletin.com/artic...NEWS/150719730

Immigrant accused in Conn. killing was spared deportation

Jean Jacques in Norwich Superior Court, Thursday, June 25, 2015.

CBS affiliate WFSB

• 64 Comments

NEW LONDON, Conn. -- A Haitian immigrant who was released from prison in January after serving a 17-year prison sentence for attempted murder is back in custody on a murder charge in the death of a Connecticut woman last month.
The Bulletin reports that Jean Jacques's prison file was marked "Detainer: Immigration" and that Connecticut officials say he was released in January to the custody of the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but was never deported.
ICE spokesman Shawn Neudauer tells the newspaper the law prohibits him from discussing Jacques' case.
On Monday, the 40-year-old Jacques was in a Connecticut court to answer to murder and drug charges, stemming from the June 15 stabbing death of Casey Chadwick in Norwich, the city where Jacques lived before he went to prison. The 25-year-old woman's body was found stuffed in a closet.
According to the Bulletin, in January 2014, Connecticut made history by becoming the first state to enact legislation that prohibited law enforcement agencies from holding people simply because they had a civil immigration detainer put on them.
The measure was touted as a way to strengthen immigrant families, the newspaper reports, but the law was clear on who was exempt from its protection: Convicted felons and people with a "final order" of deportation from the federal government were chief among them.
Haitian national Jacques fit both categories when he was paroled from prison in January of this year, the Bulletin reported. He had served 17 years in prison for attempted murder, a crime committed in Norwich. But he wasn't deported, or held for deportation.
The newspaper reported Thursday that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said federal immigration officials had been trying to deport Jacques since 2002, while he was in prison, but were unable to send him back to Haiti because the 40-year-old convicted felon could not produce identity documents to establish his citizenship there.
And, the ICE spokesman added, a 2001 Supreme Court case required the agency to release him in January -- six months before the brutal stabbing death of Chadwick in her Norwich apartment.
His bail is more than $1 million.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigran...d-deportation/

August 2, 2015

NEW LONDON — A Connecticut mother said she's trying to learn how a Haitian immigrant accused of fatally stabbing her daughter managed to avoid deportation only months before being charged with her murder.

Wendy Hartling told The Day of New London on Thursday that she felt her daughter Casey Chadwick had been killed all over again when she found out Jean Jacques should have been deported after serving a 16-year prison sentence.

The newspaper reported that Jacques' previous crimes — including the illegal use of a gun during a deadly 1996 shooting — qualified him for deportation to his native Haiti.

Jacques's prison file was marked "Detainer: Immigration" and Connecticut officials said he was released in January to the custody of the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Last month, Jacques was in New London Superior Court to answer to murder and drug charges, stemming from the June 15 stabbing death of Chadwick at her apartment in Norwich. The 25-year-old woman's body was found stuffed in a closet.

"If our federal agencies had been on top of this, my daughter still would be here with us," Hartling told The Day at the office of New London attorney Chester Fairlie.

U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement officials said they have tried to send Jacques, 40, to Haiti since 2002, but that the country wouldn't accept him without citizenship documents.

Officials with ICE said they took the appropriate steps by detaining Jacques when he was initially released from prison in 2012. They said they cannot hold someone indefinitely when a country will not accept them.

"Unquestionably, there was a breakdown in the system that allowed a convicted felon with a deportation order to return to the Norwich community," U.S. Rep Joe Courtney said in a statement to The Day. "ICE confirmed that they are conducting an ongoing internal investigation into the handling of this case, and reiterated their position that legal precedent prevented them from detaining Jacques indefinitely."

Courtney said he has "serious remaining concerns and questions" that he plans to ask federal officials.

Hartling and New London attorney Chester Fairlie are working with lawmakers including Rep. Courtney to get answers. She said she hopes to tell her story to Congress.

http://www.courant.com/breaking-news...802-story.html

Wow, this is a great example of how DHS and Obama's deportation policies are working. This guy is, without question, the worst of the worst and was allowed to stay here to murder again!

We need to all try hard to let the whole nation know the name Casey Chadwick! We probably cant do it unless a billionaire like Donald Trump takes on the case, but we can try our best.

It appears most of the news reports about this have all been confined to Connecticut except for the CBS report.

This story is a prime example of how the Obama administration is dumping thousands of illegal alien felons out of US jails right back in among the unsuspecting American citizenry!

W

i hope you guys read this: This is really our last chance to stop the invasion. I'm glad you are handing the political decision making agenda very well. But there is also the Realm of Law, and the Realm of Culture. Conservatives need to deal with the last two MUCH better.

In my city the collapse now happening could not even be foreseen. The city government is allowing huge apartment complexes and new zoning for big multi family condos, packing the renters AND secular liberal voters in like mad. And the illegal alien construction crews are everywhere. And we are not even officially in economic recovery. And true, the older generation that is here illegally could be deported, but their US citizens children cannot be----the only hope would have been if their parents were deported and the children were young. If the children are fifteen or up, they would just park them with relatives and let them wait to be old enough to work. And the dreamer kids, not here legally, will probably whine and cry until they get their way, even though legally they should be deported.

But, importantly---once our "new" (progressive) city is built, then these workers will be clamoring for something else to do, even if the economy goes back into recession. It will get nasty and ugly. I've seen it before. The city, populated now with a new herd of progressive voters and a small army of "underprivileged" workers, will look for some outlandish projects to be done----at the taxpayers expense. Anyone considered to be a person of color will be given favorable treatment and have lots of affirmative action types of programs. The black market economy will flourish, the immigrants will have formed under the table businesses and then try to hire illegal aliens to keep their costs down.

This whole cycle could be repeated ad infinitum.

We had a voter approved measure to ban drivers licenses for illegals, but they are still everywhere anyway. I'm not saying to disband the political process, it's just that a LOT more needs to be done in other areas. And then the leaders of these organizations just seem to assume they are doing everything that could possibly be done and don't want to hear suggestions. Kind of like ALIPAC readers, too, many times.