Public Defender Division crisis continues with email security breach.
The Courant’s Ed Mahony reports on another stunning development in the saga of turmoil in the Division of Public Defender Services. Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis is testing the capacity for surprise of Division employees, the Public Defender Services Commission and the public.
Bowden-Lewis, according to The Courant, “instructed an information technology staffer to download confidential email and possibly other files from computers used by two senior lawyers who are considered to be among her critics.” When agency IT director Greg Dion received an alert that security protections had been overridden, he notified the two senior lawyers whose email accounts had been breached. Bowden-Lewis and director of Human Resources Paula Lohr suspended Dion and escorted him out of the agency’s Farmington Avenue office, according to Mahony.
The head of a state agency engaging in such conduct will send tremors through state government if there are not immediate repercussions.
The incident prompted commission chairman Richard Palmer, a retired member of the Supreme Court, to issue another statement expressing dismay and hinting at action. Palmer wrote:
“The Commission and I were recently informed that Mr. Dion has been suspended with pay by the Chief Public Defender, who neither notified nor consulted the Commission prior to taking this action or anytime thereafter. I do know, however, that Mr. Dion is very highly regarded as an accomplished member of the Division’s Management Team, and I have asked the Chief Public Defender to provide me immediately with answers to a number of serious questions I have regarding her action against him. But from what I have already learned about Mr. Dion’s suspension and the reasons for it, I’m very concerned about the propriety of that action as I understand that the conduct that resulted in Mr. Dion’s suspension was intended merely to ensure the security and integrity of the Division’s IT system for the protection of private, confidential, and privileged communications of two senior Division attorneys, Deborah Del Prete Sullivan, Legal Counsel, and Joseph Lopez, Director of the Complex Litigation Unit, whose email accounts were accessed without their knowledge or consent. I also note that both Attorney Sullivan and Attorney Lopez have worked cooperatively with the Commission, in the best interests of the Division, since the Commission’s appointment nearly a year ago. For now, I can add only that I have been in contact with the other members of the Commission, and we may well call a special meeting of the Commission in the very near future to address this issue.”
Greg Dion told Bruno Matarazzo Jr., of the Republican American, “I’m disappointed this happened to me for doing the right thing and reporting something that compromised the integrity of the systems and the agency,” Dion also expressed dismay that a subordinate used their position to get access to email accounts that should not have been breached.
A special meeting of the Commission would come on the heels of Tuesday’s regularly scheduled February meeting. That meeting is said to have included raised voices when the Commission met in executive session behind closed doors. The doors may have been closed but they are not soundproof.
Published February 8, 2024.