A Place Where Quiet Is Normally Observed

The Connecticut Appellate Court has affirmed a criminal conviction of a former candidate for United States Senate (as reported by the Darien News in connection with unrelated trespassing charges)

The court reasonably could have found the following facts. On April 24, 2014, the defendant entered the Stamford Courthouse Law Library. After an argument ensued between the defendant and another library patron, the librarian requested assistance from a state marshal, Patrick Valcourt, who was posted in the hallway immediately outside of the library. Valcourt entered the library, observed the defendant arguing loudly, and instructed her to stay away from the other patron. Because the defendant was uncooperative, Valcourt, with other marshals then present, began to escort her out of the library. While being escorted, the defendant began yelling loudly and attempted to bite Valcourt’s arm. The supervising marshal who observed the attempted bite then ordered that the defendant be handcuffed and detained. Once the defendant was properly restrained, the marshals escorted her out of the library to the detention area, where she was held until she was arrested by state police on the charge of breach of the peace in the second degree, in violation of General Statutes § 53a- 181. The state later filed a substitute information charging the defendant with creating a public disturbance in violation of § 53a-181a.

 The court found the evidence sufficient to support the offense in light of the bite attempt.

The Stamford Advocate had a story on the incident

The Judicial Marshal Services Incident report from the situation at the Stamford courthouse this week said Whitnum’s problems stemmed from an earlier disagreement with another patron over papers stacked in front of a printer as well as concerns by the law librarian that Whitnum had entered her office without permission to get paper for the printer. That day, Whitnum left when asked to by marshals.

The marshals service said that after the first incident, the librarian had planned to tell Whitnum that she would lose library privileges for three days if she returned and behaved as she had a few days before, and had requested that marshals be with her. When Whitnum enterned the courthouse on Thursday, the marshals and the librarian were alerted, and were ready for her. Soon after Whitnum got to the library, another argument with the same patron from the previous day, and more marshals responded to the library. Things escalated from there, according to the marshals.

She began screaming that she wasn’t being treated fairly, the report said, and that she was being treated like a criminal, and at this point the librarian told her she was banned for three days for her behavior.

Marshals asked Whitnum to leave and she started to, but then she stopped to yell at the librarian. When a marshal tried to take her arm to guide her out, she allegedly tried to bite him on the hand and arm. After a struggle in the library, she was cuffed and brought down to the lockup, according to the marshals, where she asked to be let go, saying that she “doesn’t need this right now.”

Greenwich Time has a story on unrelated charges that the defendant had stalked the judge in her divorce case.

“I never stalked the judge,” said Lisa “Lee” Whitnum-Baker as she left the courtroom in the Golden Hill Street courthouse. “I did make a call to the judge’s home, but it was a seven-minute call and that’s not stalking,” she said. “I know the law.”

Whitnum-Baker, 53, also volunteered that she had never stalked the governor, either. “That’s just not true and besides that was years ago,” she added. There is no record of an arrest for that.

(Mike Frisch)