By Annmarie Timmins
The Concord Monitor
CONCORD, N.H. — Prison officials have recommended early release on home confinement for a Concord man charged in 2007 with breaking into a Cranmore Ridge apartment and badly beating a 28-year-old woman as she slept. Prosecutors are vehemently objecting because the attack was so violent.
The woman suffered broken bones and cuts to her face. She needed staples to close a particularly deep scalp wound, according to court records.
“The (Department of Corrections) has sold all its new provisions of early release on the promise that violent offenders would not be the ones released,” said George Waldron, deputy county attorney for Merrimack County. “And here we have a guy who burglarized a house and basically beat the crap out of a young woman.”
Department of Corrections spokesman Jeff Lyons said yesterday that that statement doesn’t accurately describe the situation. In their records, Angus Anderson, the 28-year-old inmate seeking home confinement, isn’t a violent offender, Lyons said.
That’s because while Anderson was charged with two counts of burglary, one for entering a residence at night, the other for assaulting the woman, he was convicted only of the first count. The second count referencing the assault was dropped when Anderson agreed in 2007 to plead guilty to only the first count.
So in the prison’s records, Anderson is serving 5 to 10 years for entering a residence at night, Lyons said. He’s not eligible for parole until December 2011.
But Lyons said even if Anderson was serving time for the assault, he could be considered for release on home confinement prior to his parole date. Then Corrections Commissioner William Wrenn said in December he would not consider violent offenders for early release, he wasn’t referring to home confinement, Lyons said.
“Early release” is different, Lyons said, because those inmates’ sentences are shortened and their supervision outside the walls is curtailed. It’s different for home confinement inmates, he said.
“Yes, while on (home confinement) the offender is not housed in a prison or halfway house setting,” Lyons said. “But he is still considered an inmate and is subject to all the rules pertaining to inmates. He is also under intensive supervision due to the electronic monitoring. So this does not contradict the commissioner’s earlier statements.”
Finally, Lyons said, the prison has just begun to review Anderson’s request for release on home confinement. So far, Anderson has received recommendations from his case manager and staff within offender records and the prison classification office. But Wrenn has the final call, Lyons said, and will make a decision after a judge has ruled on the prison’s request and probation and parole officials have more fully investigated Anderson’s record.
Waldron has asked the court to deny the prison’s request with a written objection that details the November 2007 attack and the victim’s injuries. The woman had fallen asleep watching television and woke up screaming because she was being beaten, Waldron wrote. She couldn’t open her eyes to see her attacker. When the police arrived, they found blood in the woman’s bedroom and bathroom.
“The victim had a deep cut on her nose that resulted in part of her nostril hanging off,” Waldron wrote. He provided the court a photo of the woman’s battered face.
The police arrested Anderson about two months after the attack after his then-girlfriend found some of the woman’s belongings in Anderson’s room, according to court records. Anderson had stolen the woman’s purse from her apartment during the break-in and dumped the contents in a bag in his room, the records said.
But even before Anderson’s girlfriend contacted the police, officers had questioned him about the Cranmore Ridge break-in because he had been a suspect in a similar incident reported in 2005, according to court records. That case remains unsolved because the police had too little evidence to positively identify the attacker, according to court records.
Copyright 2010 ProQuest Information and Learning
Copyright 2010 Concord Monitor/Sunday Monitor