I showed you a story from the South the other day, now here is one for the North. What kind of judicial system do we have in New London County? Please read this article and give me your feed back, it is from the New London Day.

Eugene Bryant feels he can say anything in order to beat the system, a New London Superior Court judge told him Wednesday.
The career criminal's creative defenses have become notorious at the Broad Street courthouse where many of his cases are heard. It seems like everybody knows about the time he claimed the alleged victim of one of his burglaries was actually his pot dealer, and was acquitted. They know, too, that he was acquitted in another case even though police caught him in the driveway of the burglarized home with stolen jewelry in his possession. He told the cops he had loaned the truck to a friend, who had called him for help when it became stuck and had just run to a local gas station for help when they pulled up.

A pleasant-looking, middle-aged man in glasses, Bryant blends in with the attorneys when he changes from prison scrubs to a business suit and proffers his articulate arguments on the witness stand.

But in his latest case, the 45-year-old New London native went too far, and it netted him a 15-year prison sentence.

Bryant told a jury this spring that he was having an affair with a Waterford woman whose house he was accused of burgling. His fingerprints were in the home because, he said, after rescuing the woman from an altercation at the McDonald's at Flanders Four Corners, he had accompanied her home, where she tended to his cuts and bruises and one thing led to another. He said they were together three times.

The woman, happily married and a devout Christian, calmly and emphatically denied his fabrication, and the jury believed her. They convicted Bryant of third-degree burglary, third-degree larceny and theft of a firearm.

The woman and her husband waited patiently for their turn to speak at Wednesday's sentencing hearing, and when it finally came, they had plenty to say.
“Please keep him in prison for as long as possible,” the wife beseeched Judge Hillary B. Strackbein. She said she could not sleep at night after coming home to find her back door kicked in and several items, including a high-caliber pistol, missing. She said she was further victimized at the trial, when Bryant “attacked the sanctity of my marriage.” She couldn't even discuss the fictitious affair with her husband for six days because, as a witness, she had been instructed not to talk about the evidence.

The husband called Bryant a proven liar and thief as he, too, asked for a long sentence.
“Lying and stealing and messing with a man's marriage is wrong,” he said.
Prosecutor Peter A. McShane said Bryant should receive the maximum sentence for fabricating the “horrible” lie about his relationship with the victim.

“For Mr. Bryant to take the stand and testify to what he testified to, that alone should give him the maximum sentence,” McShane said.
Strackbein, noting that Bryant has been convicted 27 times since 1980, said she did not feel sorry about giving him the maximum sentence of 15 years.
“I've heard no remorse from you whatsoever,” she said.

The judge made the sentence consecutive to a six-year sentence that Bryant is currently serving for cocaine possession, so he now faces 21 years in prison. He has two more cases pending, including a burglary and a charge of drunken driving and engaging an officer in pursuit.
Waterford detectives, who believe Bryant committed more burglaries than he was ever charged with, watched the sentencing Wednesday with satisfaction. So did a man who once identified Bryant as the person he caught leaving his house on Route 32 with a stolen backpack. In that case, Bryant claimed the alleged victim was actually his marijuana dealer, and that he was holding the backpack containing paintball equipment as collateral, because the man owed him money.
The jury acquitted.

In a 2004 case, Groton police charged Bryant with burglarizing a home after they caught him in the driveway, where his truck was stuck, with jewelry that had been stolen from the house. Bryant claimed he loaned the truck to a friend, and the friend had called for help after the truck became stuck. He calmly explained to police that his friend had gone to a nearby gas station to get help and asked if the cops could assist.

After listening to Bryant's defense and other evidence in that case, the jury acquitted.
Bryant's public defender, John Newson, said Bryant admitted in a presentencing interview with probation officials that he has become “a problem in the court system.”
“My life wasn't planned like this, and I'm sorry,” Bryant told the interviewer. Bryant chose not to comment at the sentencing, though he had a brief exchange with the judge about how much “time served” the court would credit him with.

Newson said Bryant, a graduate of New London High School, is an intelligent man. He told the judge his client “has had a terrible life and a terrible record.” Later, Newson declined to comment on his client's creative defenses.

“As a defense attorney, you don't often have the luxury of engaging in, 'Is what my client says the truth or not?' '' Newson said.