The original investigation by the Guilford Police Department into a purported email “threat” made to school administrators regarding the high school graduation ceremony was closed the very same day, according to police records, before a second complaint was filed days later resulting in the arrest and eventual conviction of Guilford resident, former Board of Education candidate and former police officer William Maisano.
Maisano was arrested for writing in an email to high school principal Julia Chaffe that “there will be hell to pay,” if the high school allowed teacher Regina Sullivan to go through with dying her hair rainbow to celebrate LGBTQ pride during the 2023 high school graduation on June 16.
It wasn’t until days after the graduation ceremony that Sullivan filed a report with the police saying she felt threatened, resulting in the arrest of Maisano on June 30. However, police records show that on the date the purported threat was made, police investigated but did not see fit to arrest Maisano and closed the case.
Sgt. Martina Jakober originally investigated the case on June 16 when Maisano emailed Chaffe saying he was being told Sullivan would dye her hair in “Pride colors” for graduation.
“If I see her dragging her personal politics and sexual preferences into this event there is going to be hell to pay,” Maisano wrote. “As a teacher, by law, she will be crossing the line, and so will the school by not shutting this down.”
“The school was concerned with the language in the email and they wished to have me speak with Maisano to determine what he meant by ‘hell to pay,’” Jakober wrote.
Maisano was well known to school officials, having run for the Board of Education in 2021, and appearing regularly at school board meetings where he spoke out against the inclusion of LGBTQ issues and racial issues in the school curriculum. He and other parents are also part of an ongoing federal lawsuit against the school district that alleges their children have been unfairly targeted for bullying and harassment by school staff because of their parent’s beliefs.
According to the police report, Jakober reached out to Maisano and spoke with him on the phone, during which Maisano said he would never hurt anyone, was not going to attend the graduation, and “that he was only upset that the political statement was going to detract from the hard work of all the seniors graduating.”
Following the conversation with Jakober, Maisano sent a follow-up email to school officials clarifying that by “hell to pay” he meant “media exposure,” and that the only violence that had been committed was against his family.
The case was then closed the same day it was opened. Following Sullivan’s complaint, a second case was opened and Maisano was later arrested on a misdemeanor breach of peace, with the arresting officer writing that the term “hell to pay” was “ominous,” and as a retired police officer Maisano should have known the phrase would cause “inconvenience, annoyance, alarm, and panic.”
Now, more than a year later, Maisano potentially faces up to five years in prison after Connecticut state prosecutors tacked on an additional Class D felony threatening charge to the original misdemeanor breach of peace charge. Maisano maintained his innocence and refused to plead the case down on a matter of principle. He was found guilty by a six-member jury on October 11, 2024.
Connecticut free speech attorney Mario Cerame, who is familiar with the case, says Maisano’s conviction is “absurd,” and that the term “hell to pay” is a euphemism that could mean any number of things, but it does not indicate a specific threat of physical harm.
“This isn’t even a close question, this is basic First Amendment law,” Cerame said. “This cannot stand. This is not okay. It’s obvious viewpoint discrimination.”
Cerame points to a 2014 Connecticut Supreme Court Decision in State v. Krijger, in which Watertown resident Stephen Krijger was arrested and convicted for second degree threatening and breach of peace following an in-person altercation between Krijger and town attorney Nicholas Kepple outside of a courthouse where the two had been arguing over a zoning dispute.
During the confrontation, Krijger told town attorney Nicholas Kepple – whose son had been severely injured and disabled in a vehicle accident – that “what happened to your son is going to happen to you,” and “I’m going to be there to watch it happen.”
According to the Connecticut Supreme Court opinion authored by former Chief Justice Chase Rogers, “only serious expressions of an intention to commit an act of unlawful violence are punished,” and the state did not present evidence that “a reasonable listener, familiar with the entire factual context of the defendant’s statements, would be highly likely to interpret them as communicating a genuine threat of violence rather than protected expression, however offensive and repugnant.”
“If Kreiger came out as not a true threat, it’s very difficult for me to understand how [Maisano] could possibly be a true threat,” Cerame said.
The United States Supreme Court has also set a high bar for what constitutes a threat in a 7-2 ruling in Counterman v. Colorado that to establish a “true threat” that is not protected by freedom of speech, “the state must prove that the defendant had some subjective understanding of the statements’ threatening nature, based on a showing no more demanding than recklessness.”
Justice Elena Kagan wrote that a fear of prosecution and the “legal system getting that judgement wrong,” could chill free speech.
In a video that went viral just after the 2024 election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, a Cheshire public school teacher Annie Dunleavy threatened Trump supporters, saying they won’t be safe, and “will end on a stretcher, gone forever,” if they “test her gangster.”
The video resulted in the school being inundated with emails, social media posts, and phone calls, as well as requiring a police presence at the school. Although Dunleavy resigned shortly after the disruption, she was not arrested.
Cerame says he believes that even if an appellate court overturns the case, Maisano’s arrest and prosecution is essentially a warning to all other parents, chilling free speech rights.
“Still, people will have been chilled forever. They will have permanently hurt freedom of speech in Connecticut,” Cerame said. “People will think twice about criticizing the school. Parents who are concerned about their children’s education will now have think twice before they level rational criticism at a school. It’s not okay. It’s outrageous.”
Maisano says he hopes to be able to appeal his conviction but is running out of funds to mount his defense. Maisano is scheduled for sentencing on December 12.
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Rediculous! We are all so afraid to speak our minds, no matter how inoculous of words we speak, to be trampled by the State !
This is the arguably most egregious assault on the right of free speech in Connecticut’s history. It exposes just how radical and corrupt the Guilford school system is, starting at the top with the radical and incompetent superintendent, Paul Freeman, who was being sued by Maisano and two other parents; the incompetent high school principal, Julia Chaffe who should have been expected to exercise good judgment and caution Sullivan that her conduct violated school policy; an obeisant and monolithic BOE that saw as an opportunity to strike back at one of their biggest critics; the vindictive union president and complainant, Regina Sullivan who violated school policy; and the police department and board of police commissioners who remained silent while this travesty played itself out. It was compounded by the appalling conduct of the state prosecutor, and the presiding judge, who should have summarily dismissed this case.
There is also an addendum to this incident implicating the president of the state teachers’ union, Kate Dias. At a seminar in Hartford for union members of the CEA, Bill Maisano was held out as an example of threatening behavior to the attendees. Those responsible for this presentation flashed the text of his first email on the screen along with the defendant’s address, but without his qualifying second email, the totality of which completely changed the tenor of the communication, and of which the complainant, Guilford union president, Regina Sullivan, had to be aware. In doing so, the union leadership deprived its members of the full context of the incident so as to prejudice their response, and unfairly, and despicably, opened up the defendant to harassment and vilification.
Is it any wonder that, that according state test scores, 350,000 of Connecticut’s 500,000 students cannot do math proficiently (at grade level) and 300,000 students cannot read proficiently. Under the Supreme Court’s Janus decisions, fair-minded teachers should quit their unions and join of the two non-political teachers’ associations which provide greater benefits and at far lower cost.
Guilford is a disgusting liberal cesspool made up of America hating NY Transients.
I hope the guy sues the he’ll out of the town and the school. The lesbian teacher VIOLATED POLICY and NOTHING was done. The weak pathetic Superintendent changed the long time mascot because of a FEW liberal democRAT complaints
*private citizen and former cop threatens woman and spews anti-lgbt rhetoric”
“Wow, big FREE SPEECH issue we have in CT”
Maybe Guilford public schools actually just respect their long standing employees and none of the high school students care what color her hair is? Choose a better culture war