Lapses Lead To New Trial For One Of The Most Brutal Crimes In Connecticut History

The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed the Appellate Court’s grant of a new trial to a defendant convicted of “one of the most brutal crimes” in state history for Brady and ineffective assistance violations

The petitioner was forty-two years old when he allegedly committed one of the most brutal crimes in our state’s history—the rape, torture and murder of a defenseless eighty-eight year old woman, a person who, by all accounts, was like a grandmother to him. Although there is abundant evidence in the record concerning the petitioner’s simplemindedness, his peculiarities and his very rigid way of thinking, one searches the record in vain for evidence that he ever was physically violent, that he suffered from a mood disorder, psychosis, drug addiction or anything else that could explain why, after visiting the victim every Sunday for years, he suddenly went back to her apartment on the Sunday in question and brutally murdered her, without his wife noticing either that he had left their house or any change in his demeanor or appearance upon his return. Furthermore, at the petitioner’s criminal trial, the state was not required to commit to any particular time frame for the murder, arguing only that it occurred sometime between 5:45 p.m., when the victim was last seen alive by Howard, her daughter, and 8:05 p.m., when she failed to answer Howard’s telephone calls. If, however, the original jury were to have heard and credited DeHaan’s and Kelder’s testimony that the fire was set between 7:30 and 8:05 p.m., and if that jury also were to have heard and credited Martin’s testimony that the petitioner was at home with her watching television at that time, there is not just a reasonable probability of a different result, there is a near certainty of one. And, as we have explained, there simply is no reason why the jury reasonably could not have credited that testimony. The petitioner therefore has established, under Strickland, that his first habeas counsel’s representation of him was constitutionally deficient due to counsel’s failure to pursue a Brady claim founded on the state’s suppression of the Ludlow note because that nondisclosure deprived the petitioner of evidence establishing a complete and potentially compelling alibi, thereby gravely undermining the reliability of the verdict against him. Because the record demonstrates convincingly that the petitioner is burdened by an unreliable conviction, he is entitled to a new criminal trial.

There is a concurrence and two dissents (linked here and here) (Mike Frisch)