Justices Norcott and Rogers.
Melissa Bailey Photos
Ron Taylor, who’s homebound from colon cancer, missed Monday’s hearing. His lawyer and wife spoke on his behalf.
HARTFORD — Nine months after they were exonerated of murder charges and freed from prison, two New Haven men met Monday with a new obstacle: In the eyes of the state Supreme Court justices now reviewing their case, they remain guilty until proven innocent.
Ronald Taylor and George Gould, who served over 16 years of 80-year sentences on murder convictions, were released from state custody last April after a judge found they were imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit.
Now a free man, Gould walked Monday into state Supreme Court, where Assistant State’s Attorney Michael O’Hare asked a panel of justices to put him and Taylor back in prison. The justices’ questioning signaled the legal obstacles the men must overcome in order to remain free.
Taylor, 51 and Gould, 48, were convicted in 1995 of killing Fair Haven bodega owner Eugenio Deleon Vega two years earlier. After the state’s star witness recanted her testimony, Superior Court Judge Stanley Fuger last year overturned their convictions and ruled they were actually innocent and had suffered “manifest injustice” in the hands of the law. The state was not swayed by the recantation; it’s seeking to overturn Judge Fuger’s decision.
Wearing a white Yankees hat and a black leather jacket, Gould watched the hour-long proceedings Monday morning from the public gallery. He joined about 40 attorneys, reporters and supporters under the gold chandeliers and gilded ceiling of the 1910 courtroom. Taylor stayed home to recover from major surgery related to Stage IV colon cancer.
Because of the cancer that’s threatening Taylor’s life, the men had asked the Supreme Court to rule on their fate directly rather than letting the case pass first through Appellate Court, where it had been headed. State prosecutors seek to reverse Judge Fuger’s decision, arguing that despite the recantation of their star witness’s testimony, Taylor and Gould still need to prove they are innocent of the crime.
The unusual case, which began as a claim of actual innocence in habeas court, presents a reversal of the burden of proof: Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, as Taylor and Gould are considered guilty until proven innocent.
In his remarks to the panel of seven justices Monday, State Prosecutor O’Hare argued that Judge Fuger used the wrong standard of proof in granting Taylor and Gould’s claim of actual innocence. He said based on legal precedence, such a claim can be granted only if two “prongs” are proven: that there is “clear and convincing” evidence that the petitioners did not commit the crime, and that no reasonable jury would convict them.
Chief Justice Chase Rogers emphasized that standard of proof throughout the hearing. She brought it up after passionate speeches from Taylor and Gould’s attorneys about how the state had botched the case against their clients, and had failed to prove their guilt.
In the same line of argument and tone of outrage that Judge Fuger espoused in his decision exonerating the men, Peter Tsimbidaros, Taylor’s attorney, recited a quotation by former prosecutor James Clark.
“This case rises and falls on the testimony of Doreen Stiles,” Clark said during the trial.
Stiles, a drug-addicted police informant, was the only supposed eyewitness who placed the defendants at the murder scene. DNA evidence found at the murder scene did not match Gould or Taylor. Stiles came forward and recanted her statement in 2006, allowing the defendants to open a joint habeas corpus claim of actual innocence based on new evidence.
With Stiles’ recantation, Tsimbidaros told the justices Monday, all the state’s evidence against Taylor and Gould “is debunked.”
Gould’s attorney, Joseph Visone, made the same argument. His voice became so loud with outrage that Chief Rogers twice asked him to pull the microphone farther away from his face.
When you remove Stiles’ testimony, Visone charged, “what evidence do you have?”
Justice Rogers asserted that they had won on that point.
The prosecutor “conceded no reasonable jury could convict them,” Rogers said.
However, she said, “that’s not enough.”
Taylor and Gould need to know “not only that a jury wouldn’t convict them,” but that “they didn’t do it,” Rogers said.
O’Hare did not concede in court that the recantation “debunked” Stiles’ original testimony. But justices seemed to accept his main point, which was that “if you take that testimony away, it isn’t evidence that the petitioners didn’t do the crime.”
What then do the petitioners need to do to prove their innocence? Justice Chase asked O’Hare. He replied that they’d have two options: show that someone else did the crime, or give “clear and convincing evidence that they could not have committed the crime,” in other words, give a good alibi.
“They’d have to show impossibility,” O’Hare said.
Justice Richard Palmer (pictured) said that statement bothered him.
What if Taylor or Gould happened to be home alone, watching TV on the night of the crime? he asked.
“My concern is that if only an alibi or an impossibility defense would permit” a claim of innocence, then the “happenstance of where that person was on the night of the offense” might mean they couldn’t prove their own innocence. He asked why a judge couldn’t accept credible testimony from someone that they were, for example, home watching TV.
O’Hare replied that Taylor and Gould had had the chance to make that kind of argument during their trial in Superior Court, where they were innocent until proven guilty. In habeas court, the burden of proof is higher.
Asked how he has proved his client’s innocence, Tsimbidaros replied by turning to a line of reasoning he tried in habeas court — that the murder victim’s son, Carlos Deleon Vega, had the motive and the means to commit the murder.
Justices Norcott and Rogers
Justice Flemming Norcott, Jr. (at right in photo) gave a skeptical reply.
“Can circumstantial evidence prove actual innocence?” he asked.
“Yes,” Tsimbidaros replied. “Yes, it can.”
Justice Dennis Eveleigh pointed out that the habeas court found that the only newly discovered evidence was the recantations of Stiles and another witness, Mary Boyd — not evidence that Deleon was the killer.
Justice Palmer, too, appeared skeptical of Tsimbidaros’ claim that he had proved the innocence of his client. He said the third-party information doesn’t do the trick.
“It seems like third-party evidence would be admissible,” Palmer said, “but it’s very difficult for me to see that Mr. Deleon is the perpetrator of this crime by clear and convincing evidence.”
“As strong as the recantation is,” Palmer said, it “doesn’t solve” the first prong of the burden of proof, that the men did not do the crime.
In closing remarks, O’Hare asked that their convictions be reversed and that they be returned to prison to carry out the rest of their 80-year sentences.
Taylor and Gould’s attorneys asked that Judge Fuger’s decision be upheld and that the men remain free. Court ended after 70 minutes. No decision was issued from the bench.
Mary Taylor and private investigator Gerald O’Donnell, who helped free her husband.
Outside the courtroom, Taylor’s wife Mary took a moment to confront the prosecutor.
“I’m saying a prayer for you, Mr. O’Hare, that you never suffer the pain that my husband suffered from the cancer that he has,” she said.
O’Hare replied with a simple “thank you.”
After court, he said he doesn’t agree with Justice Roger’s characterization that he “conceded” that a jury would fail to convict the men given the new evidence around Stiles’ recantation.
O’Hare said he remains confident that the petitioners failed to reach their burden of proof.
“There is no proof of actual innocence,” he said.
Kathy O’Donnell, wife of private investigator Gerald O’Donnell, congratulates Tsimbidaros after court.
Mary Taylor left court with Tsimbidaros. The attorney said he wished Taylor were able to attend, but that he is confined to a bed after a major surgery. Taylor spent over two weeks at Yale-New Haven Hospital, where doctors cut him open with an 11-inch incision and removed a large tumor from his spine. Taylor’s cancer has reached Stage IV, he said.
Taylor “was encouraged that the Supreme Court accepted the case,” Tsimbidaros said. He said despite his medical condition, Taylor is staying strong.
“He’s a man of extremely strong spirit,” the attorney said.
Previous coverage of this case:
• Exonerated Prisoner Fights For His Life
• Exonerated Prisoners Walk Free
• State Won’t Block Prisoners’ Release
• Judge Orders Prisoners Freed
• Prosecutor Sticks To Guns
• Judge Delays Release In Wrongful Conviction Case
• Outraged Judge Reverses Murder Convictions