New Trial Ordered In Baby-Murder Case

A state judge has granted Adam Carmon’s request for a new trial in connection with one of New Haven’s most notorious murders.

State Superior Court Judge Jon Alander’s order comes as Carmon has spent the past 28 years behind bars after being convicted of the murder of a baby. Alander ordered a new trial in the case in light of suppressed evidence and new science calling the conviction into question.

In his ruling, Judge Alander wrote that the newly available evidence would ​“likely” have yielded a different outcome in the original trial: ​“How could anyone have confidence in a verdict of guilty in a case such as this?”

Read his full 51-page decision here.

Adam Carmon was convicted of the 1994 murder of 7‑month-old Danielle Taft, whose killing inside the home of her grandmother rattled the city and traumatized a family of survivors, leading to passage of gun-control legislation statewide. On the night of the murder, 14 bullets pierced the windows of Charlene Troutman’s apartment, paralyzing Troutman and taking baby Danielle’s life.

A jury found Carmon guilty of murder in 1995. He was sentenced to 85 years in prison. 

He has always maintained his innocence.

On Wednesday — roughly half a year after an emotional, week-long series of hearings in April that launched months of post-trial briefs and deliberation — Carmon won a new trial. 

He now awaits an opportunity to argue his innocence before a jury, which could clear his name and land him freedom.

Carmon’s attorneys, a team led by David Keenan and Doug Lieb, filed two petitions — a petition for a new trial and a habeas corpus petition — which both aimed to garner him a new trial based on different thresholds. Alander granted both of those petitions in his Wednesday decision.

A significant portion of Carmon’s habeas case pertained to a host of evidence that prosecutors suppressed in the original trial. While state prosecutors Craig Nowak and Lisa D’Angelo did not deny in April that much of the evidence in question had been withheld from the defense, they argued that the evidence was not significant enough to justify a new trial; the law indicates that withheld evidence can spur a new trial if the evidence could have affected the outcome of the original trial. 

Ultimately, Alander disagreed. He ruled on Wednesday that much of the suppressed evidence in Carmon’s case could have swayed a jury, including information about multiple other suspects and information undermining the eyewitness identifications that pinpointed Carmon as the shooter.

“Individually, none of the new items of evidence is a game changer. Collectively, they combine to likely alter the outcome,” he wrote. ​“Had the suppressed evidence and the new forensic evidence been available to the defense, it is reasonably probable, and likely, that the result of the trial would have been different.”

Alander also decided that new discoveries in the fields of gun forensics and eyewitness analysis, which have come to light since the original trial, could have affected the outcome of Carmon’s incarceration. Specifically, he cited new scientific evidence calling into question the certainty of the firearm evidence analysis and new evidence on the reliability of eyewitness evidence in moments of acute stress.

In a comment submitted to the Independent for this article, Carmon’s attorneys wrote by text: ​“More than 27 years ago, our client Adam Carmon was wrongly convicted for shooting to death six-month-old Danielle Taft and wounding her grandmother [Charlene] Troutman. Because of his perseverance, the Connecticut judicial system today finally recognized that injustice. Our criminal justice system depends on police and prosecutors to act ethically and honestly. Unfortunately, that did not happen in this case, and both Mr. Carmon and the Taft family have been made to suffer the consequences. The Court’s thoughtful and thorough 51-page decision speaks for itself. We fervently hope that the State’s Attorney’s Office will now work with us to ensure Mr. Carmon is released from custody as soon as possible.”

Shirley Troutman, Danielle’s mother and Charlene Troutman’s daughter, wrote in a text message to the Independent, ​“I’m not very happy with the decision but if there is new evidence out there saying that he didn’t do it [and] someone did[,] someone needs to pay for my daughter and my mother’s death.”

New Haven State’s Attorney John Doyle wrote in a statement, ​“At this time, the New Haven State’s Attorney’s Office is reviewing the judge’s decision to determine what next steps, if any, need to be taken in this case.”

What The State Suppressed

In his ruling, Alander pointed to several particular pieces of suppressed evidence that he said cumulatively could have affected Carmon’s conviction.

1. Evidence related to Arthur Brantley and Anthony Little, whom Carmon’s lawyers have suggested are alternative suspects in the murder. The day before the shooting, Brantley confronted Danielle’s uncle, Richard Troutman, over a narcotics-related debt. After the encounter, a group of Troutman’s friends jumped Brantley outside 810 Orchard. Over a series of police interviews, Brantley denied any involvement with the murder and failed a polygraph test. He subsequently confessed that he and his drug boss, Anthony Little, had been in a car with a man named Demetrius Bates while Bates fired shots at the Troutmans. Later, he recanted this confession.

Judge Alander ruled that suppressed police reports about an interview with Brantley’s mother should have been disclosed. During that interview, Daisy Brantley promised to encourage her son to come forward with information about the crime, just before Brantley approached police to give a confession he would later recant.

The police report ​“supports a claim that Brantley’s statement inculpating Little in the shooting was true as it was motivated by a desire to tell the truth at the urging of his mother,” wrote Alander.

In addition, according to Alander, prosecutors should have disclosed statements from Little and Little’s alibi witness, Alfred Kitchens. Kitchens’ statement contradicted Little’s by stating that Little and Brantley had spoken on the phone about the fight outside 810 Orchard St., a conversation that Little denied having.

Alander wrote that those documents not only support theories that Brantley had been involved with the murder, but that ​“the documents call into question the integrity of the police investigation,” given that police failed to arrest Little for known outstanding warrants while taking his statement,

Alander wrote, ​“On February 9, 1994, Little was allowed to walk out of the police station after giving his statement without being served with an outstanding warrant notwithstanding that the detective conducting the interview knew that a warrant existed for his arrest. In fact, Little was wanted on two active arrest warrants, one of which was for escape from parole for a drug conviction. … The fact that Little was not arrested on outstanding warrants could have been used to show that the police were now focused on the petitioner as the shooter to the exclusion of all others.”

2. Evidence pertaining to Jaime Stanley, one of the eyewitnesses who identified Carmon as the shooter.

Stanley was shown a photo array of suspects and subsequently taken to an arraignment hearing at which Carmon appeared for a different crime. At the arraignment hearing, Stanley identified Carmon as the shooter.

Prosecutors waited until midway through the trial to disclose the array of photos from which Stanley had identified Carmon. Two of the photos were of Carmon at different ages, while another photo of a man named David Myles had a note on the back that read ​“Pick as a look a like to the shooter at 810 Orchard.” The note contradicted testimony from two detectives that Stanley had identified Carmon, not Myles, as a ​“look-alike” in the photo array.

These photos were disclosed to the defense after the state’s case had rested, and Carmon’s attorney at the time did not notice the writing on the back of Myles’ photo. Alander wrote that the ​“extreme lateness of the disclosure” along with ​“the state’s misrepresentation” rendered the disclosure improper.

The prosecution never disclosed photographs of the men at the arraignment hearing where Stanley identified Carmon. Of the twelve people lined up to appear in court that day, ​“only one arraignee was similar to the petitioner in race, age, hight and weight and lacking facial hair,” Alander wrote. He cited an analysis by psychologist Nancy Franklin stating that because of the number of dissimilar individuals in the lineup, Stanley’s arraignment identification was ​“highly biased.”

Prosecutors also withheld prosecutorial notes and a police report calling into question Stanley’s ability to adequately see the shooting.

3. Evidence related to Raymond Jones, the other eyewitness in the Carmon case. Alander ruled that information about a pending criminal case against the state’s other witness against Carmon, Raymond Jones, should have been disclosed to the defense. Prosecutors explicitly told the court and defense attorneys that Jones had not faced any criminal charges at the time of his police statement, which turned out to be untrue.

4. Evidence related to Anthony Stevenson, who testified that Carmon had scraped the inside barrel of the gun that police connected to the crime with a screwdriver. Prosecutors withheld a police report detailing statements from Stevenson with elements that were inconsistent his testimony at trial. Alander wrote that the police report could have caused the jury to doubt the validity of Stevenson’s testimony and the ballistic evidence it supported.

5. Notes from the police ballistic analysis, including information about the database search results that came up while Det. James Stephenson researched the firearm associated with the murder. Carmon’s attorneys argued that the results for multiple searches that Stephenson conducted opened up the possibility that other firearms could have been used in the murder.

Click here to read articles published at the time of Danielle’s murder about the circumstances both in the case and the surrounding neighborhood, as well as an interview with the man who owned the gun stolen to commit the killing. Click here for a story about how the family and neighborhood were faring 20 years after the murder, and here for an account of Danielle’s posthumous 21st birthday.

Previous Independent coverage of Adam Carmon habeas trial:

• Day 1: New Trial Sought In Baby’s Murder
• Day 2: Lost Years Flow Into Courtroom 5a
• Day 3: Trial Goes Down Memory Hole
• Day 4: Hyphen, Click Probed In Baby-Murder Case
• Day 5 & 6: Trial Q: When Did 2nd Suspect Not Lie?
• Day 7: Q For Judge: Would Verdict Have Changed?