By Seamus McGraw

Missing Precious Opportunities

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The truth is, whatever the reasons behind the media's reluctance to plunge into stories like the death of Divina Genao, real opportunities to do what journalism is supposed to do, to identify flaws and failures and help identify solutions, are being lost.

As much as any case since, Divina Genao's death underscored a complex web of a series governmental failures, detailed in the reports in the Record. Among other things, the newspaper found that through his lifelong criminal career, police, prosecutors, and mental health officials had repeatedly failed to adequately share information about Jeffrey's violent history and his potential for more violence. As a result, despite having admitted to a murder in 1971, a crime for which he was later deemed unfit to stand trial- Jeffrey was repeatedly granted lenient sentences and probation and parole for violent crimes. In fact, just weeks before he strangled Divina in his rented room as police banged at his door Jeffrey had been paroled from prison.

Despite the stories in The Record detailing his sojourn through a fractured criminal justice system, the larger media remained largely silent about the case.

But that didn't mean that everyone ignored it. In 1993, the late Robert Wilentz, then Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, asked former prosecutor and noted attorney Edwin Stier to launch a probe into the bureaucratic failings in the Divina Genao case.

Perhaps in part because he was doing his work outside of the media spotlight, Stier and his commission took nearly three years to complete their probe, though Stier now insists that his work could have been done even if the case had been as high profile as the later slaying of Megan Kanka.

In the end, Stier and his commission came up with a sweeping package of rules, laws and guidelines, many of which have since been adopted, designed to improve cooperation between various agencies of law enforcement, the courts and the mental health system to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again.

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