Michael Paranzino, President of Throw Away The Key
by Regan Morris
Mr. Paranzino started the advocacy and education group Throw Away The Key in hopes of reducing violent crime. Through Throw Away The Key, Paranzino pushes for longer sentences for convicted rapists and child molesters and the death penalty for convicted murderers.
On the eve of Boyd's execution, Paranzino issued a statement urging Americans to remember Boyd's victims—his wife and father-in-law.
"When Kenneth Boyd is executed tomorrow morning, let us pause and say a prayer for the 600,000 innocent men, women, and children who have been brutally murdered across America in the time that 1,000 killers have faced justice," Paranzino said in the statement. "Let us also remember Julie Curry Boyd and her father, Thomas Curry, who were murdered in cold blood by Kenneth Boyd."
Paranzino, 39, told LawCrossing he was inspired to start Throw Away The Key in 2002 because he felt think tanks and the media often ignored the victims of violent crimes. Throw Away The Key's motto is "Incarceration Works."
An attorney and former Congressional staffer and lobbyist, Paranzino runs the grassroots, nonprofit alone from his house outside of Washington, DC. Paranzino had been running a small public relations and lobbying firm when he decided to focus full time on raising his children and creating Throw Away The Key. The group has recently received increased media attention because of the 1,000th-execution milestone.
Robin Lovitt was scheduled to be the 1,000th person executed, but Virginia Governor Mark Warner granted clemency a day before Lovitt was to be killed. The case drew worldwide media attention, which Paranzino said is too often focused on the convicted killer.
"Many people know a lot about the criminal Lovitt, but nobody knows anything about Clayton Dicks, the forgotten victim. He was just an average Joe, working at a pool hall, just living his life, making his meat working the late shift that night; and he was brutally murdered over the cash box," Paranzino said. "He had a family, and he deserved to be able to live. And every time we talk about Lovitt, the killer, we ought to mention that there was a guy named Clayton Dicks and his life had dignity and value."
Paranzino, who graduated from Yale and attended New York University Law School, said too often convicted rapists and child molesters are let out of prison after short sentences only to commit more crimes. He said his dream for Throw Away The Key is to arrange funding for the organization so he can staff it and eventually turn it over to staff so he can return to work as a lobbyist.
What the group lacks in funding, it makes up for in public sympathy, Paranzino said. He quotes various polls, which show Americans overwhelmingly support the death penalty. Paranzino has become close with the family of Carlie Brucia, the 11-year-old girl who was abducted and slain in Florida. He said the Brucia family has since used material and statistics from Throw Away The Key to lobby Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Paranzino often quotes Department of Justice statistics, and the numbers infuriate him. Two-thirds of released criminals are re-arrested for a new crime within three years. The average rapist serves about seven years; the average child molester serves about three years.
"Those numbers are so shocking, and people say, 'You really want to throw away the key,' but the truth is the numbers are so far from that," he said.
Throw Away The Key runs on a shoestring budget and relies on small donations, often from stay-at-home moms, Paranzino said.
"I'm a policy wonk at heart, so here we launched this entity without really having a plan, because we cared about the issues," he said. "So it was done backwards. Most nonprofits start with the funding."
Originally from Philadelphia, Paranzino worked in corporate law in Phoenix, AZ, after graduation, but soon realized corporate law wasn't for him. Instead of reading ABA journals after work, he was drawn to CSPAN and the happenings in Washington. Paranzino soon quit his job to volunteer for Jon Kyl's Senate race in 1994. Then Paranzino went to work for Congressman Matt Salmon, eventually becoming his chief of staff. Paranzino spent much of his time developing anti-crime legislation.
Paranzino said he considered becoming a prosecutor, but he saw many people in the profession shift to defense work later in their careers, and he said he could never defend criminals.
"I launched this group as a way for me to try to help crime victims, who to me are the truly forgotten group in this debate," Paranzino said. "I lead a very unusual life. I call these my strange years. I'm an at-home dad. I have two kids at home, and I go through contortions. CNN wanted me today, so I had to find a mom-friend to cover me so I could do CNN. That's the kind of life I lead."
Paranzino donates his time to Throw Away The Key and said he may return to working for a paycheck in the future and that selling his tech stocks before the bubble burst has helped his family manage.
He said his legal training has helped his policy initiatives and encourages other attorneys to follow their dreams if they are unhappy practicing law.
"I walked away from a lucrative career to work for nothing for four months and then for peanuts on a Senate race, so I always tell young attorneys that I'm counseling to embrace risk," he said. "I've managed to go from a life where my life was great if I was on a good case with a great partner and my life was lousy if I was on a lousy case with an unpleasant partner. Now I do only what I want to do. I work only on issues that I care about. By embracing that risk and taking the financial hits at times, I've managed to move myself into a position where I do exactly what I want."
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