Melissa Bailey Photo
From left: Gudis, Evarts, Pattis.
A city cop who took vacation days to serve 10 days in jail for drunk driving came close to losing his job, but was rescued when his lawyer uncovered a 1998 cassette tape from the basement of police headquarters.
The audio tape, recorded during Officer James Evarts’ original oral interview with former Police Chief Mel Wearing, shows Evarts told the truth — at least in one key circumstance — about a past DUI violation that has come to haunt him of late.
Officer Evarts got caught driving drunk while claiming to be out sick, failed to tell his department he was taking vacation days to serve jail time, lied about having a prior DUI conviction, and is forbidden to speak with prosecutors, according to the city. Chief Frank Limon recommended firing him.
Evarts, a 13-year veteran of the police force, ultimately hung onto his job in a labor hearing Monday night before the Board of Police Commissioners. He was given one year’s suspension without pay and ordered to participate in an alcohol rehabilitation program.
After deliberating for 20 minutes behind closed doors, the commission unanimously found Evarts guilty on three departmental violations for deceiving his department about his jail term. Thanks in part to the audio tape, the panel found him not guilty on two other counts related to lying on his job application about a prior DUI.
From left: Commissioner Theodore Brooks, police union attorney Richard Gudis, Evarts.
The decision took place on the third floor of police headquarters at 1 Union Ave. in the second of two dramatic hearings before a packed audience of police, family and other supporters. The hearings began on June 30 and were continued until this week to give Evarts’ attorney time to respond to a last-minute “ambush” by the state prosecutor’s office. The “ambush” consisted of a letter from New Haven State’s Attorney Michael Dearington. “Effective immediately,” Dearington wrote, Evarts many not enter any prosecutor’s office, and the state will refuse to consider any police-related documents he signs.
Evarts’ attorney, prominent criminal defense attorney Norm Pattis, failed to get Dearington to reverse those orders. But he did succeed in saving his client’s job.
His most powerful weapon, other than rhetorical attacks that aimed to put the city on the ropes for a shoddy internal affairs probe, was a Certron cassette tape.
The tape, dated Sept. 15, 1998, combats one of the city’s claims against Evarts — that he falsified his job application by hiding a past drunken driving conviction. Evarts was convicted of a DUI offense in 1993 in Plymouth, Conn., for which he was ordered to attend a court-ordered rehabilitation program. An internal affairs probe found that Evarts failed to mention that DUI when he applied for a job with the New Haven police department in 1997, four years later.
The audio tape wasn’t part of the internal affairs probe. No one told Evarts it existed. Pattis uncovered the tape as he searched for evidence that would clear his client, a hunt that brought former Chief Wearing back to the department on a subpoena. After the first hearing, the city found the tape in the basement of police headquarters.
The tape wasn’t played before the public Monday. But lawyers from both sides agreed on the following description: On the tape, Wearing asks Evarts about any past convictions. Evarts concedes he got picked up on a DUI, which he says occurred six years prior. Asked about the disposition of the case, Evarts says he believes it will be expunged in the next six months.
Pattis said the tape clearly shows Evarts fessing up to his past conviction.
Pattis said Monday that after discovering the tape, he took a copy to State’s Attorney Dearington to show his client’s honesty. He asked him to rescind the letter barring Evarts from working alongside prosecutors. As of Monday, Dearington still hadn’t changed his decision, Pattis reported.
The city’s lawyer, Dugas (in foreground of photo), did back off. He admitted the tape “muddies the waters” of the charge that Evarts lied on his job application.
Dugas said it’s still true that Evarts’ job application was “inaccurate,” because he denied having been convicted of anything other than a minor traffic violation.
But “he appears to have come forward in his interview” about the past offense, Dugas conceded.
Dugas said the city would no longer be pushing the point about lying on the job app. But, he announced, Chief Limon was still recommending termination.
The crux of the city’s argument was that Evarts’ credibility has been destroyed.
Evarts “is of very little use to you as a police officer,” Dugas told the commission. “If we can’t rely on the veracity and truthfulness of police reports and of police officers, then we’re in a world of trouble.”
That credibility crumbled, he argued, when Evarts deceived the department surrounding his second DUI. Last July, Evarts called in sick and then got charged with drunken driving by Old Saybrook police, according to the city. Evarts then tried to cover his tracks: He took vacation time to serve a 10-day jail sentence; he had a fellow cop take care of his gun while he was locked up. The police chief didn’t find out Evarts was incarcerated until the department got a call that one of its officers was concerned for his safety behind bars.
Pattis rolled out a series of witnesses to combat the credibility charge.
Sgt. Vincent Anastasio (pictured), who has intermittently supervised Evarts for the past 12 years, called the officer “very astute” and “very credible.” He said Evarts works long hours and has been “very respectful” to the people he comes across at crime scenes.
In all, Pattis lined up eight people to testify Monday to Evarts’ honesty and credibility. Not all of the 35 supporters present spoke. Some who didn’t speak said they’d be willing to testify.
Evarts, who chose to keep his hearing open to the public, declined to take the stand. He remained composed, scribbling notes to his lawyers and whispering in their ears, throughout the nearly two-hour proceedings.
Officer Craig Miller, Evarts’ police academy classmate, appeared under subpoena. Pattis tried to loosen him up by joking about the Taser on Miller’s belt. (“If I’m polite, you won’t pull it out?”) Miller called “Jimmy” credible and “straightforward.” Under questioning, Miller recounted an embarrassing moment in his own life when he made a mistake on the witness stand and had to apologize to the jury and judge.
Pattis used Miller to prove a second point — that honest people can make mistakes on the stand. Evarts was threatened with perjury after prosecutors found out he had a prior DUI conviction, after he had testified in court to the contrary. Prosecutors used the threat of a perjury warrant to persuade Evarts to take a deal: He agreed to plead no lo contendere to the DUI charge and serve 10 days in jail in exchange for not being charged with perjury.
At the time, Evarts was being represented by a cop who was a part-time lawyer. Pattis said he wishes he had been Evarts’ lawyer then, because he would have called the prosecution’s bluff. In his 20 years as a criminal defense attorney, he said, he has never heard of anyone getting charged with perjury for making a “mistake” on an application to an accelerated rehab program.
Police commissioners appeared to buy this argument: By a 5 – 0 vote, they found Evarts not guilty of the departmental violation that stemmed from allegedly lying on the stand.
Chairman Richard Epstein (pictured) was less willing to give Evarts a pass on his behavior surrounding his jail sentence.
“I’m troubled” by the use of vacation days for jail time, Epstein told the room. “You’ve got to do better for me as to why it’s not intentionally deceiving the department.”
Pattis acknowledged Epstein’s point.
“Was there an intention to keep this under the radar?” Pattis replied. “There probably was.”
Pattis said when Evarts gave his police-issued gun to another officer to hold onto while he served jail time, it wasn’t the worst he could have done — he could have sold it to a “gang-banger” to settle a drug debt. But he acknowledged it wasn’t a “textbook example” of proper behavior.
“I’m not asking for a commendation or a good conduct medal,” Pattis said. “Just something other than a discharge.”
He got his wish: The panel gave Evarts one year’s suspension, six months in alcohol rehabilitation, and a year of probation.
Epstein said the year’s suspension was based in part on Evarts’ past disciplinary record: Evarts already served a three-month suspension (which he bargained down from a six-month suspension the police commission handed him last October). So this punishment had to be greater than the previous one.
Police union attorney Richard Gudis said the union will grieve the ruling, which may lead to a reduced punishment.
“We’re obviously relieved that he was not discharged,” said Pattis, though he called the sentence excessive.
The punishment “came down to the jail time and the nature in which he handled his gun,” said Chairman Epstein. By unanimous vote, the commission found Evarts guilty of failing to tell a superior of a matter “that should properly come to the attention of the Department,” of conduct unbecoming of an officer, and of conduct that would cause to “discredit, lower or injure the morale” of the department.
Epstein pointed to the audio tape, as well as testimony from internal affairs investigator Sgt. John Wolcheski, as reason to let Evarts off the hook on the other two charges, of falsifying records and committing a crime (perjury). Wolcheski had acknowledged Evarts may not have willfully misled his department about the status of past his DUI conviction.
Pattis accused the department of conducting “half an investigation” by missing the audio tape, which ended up being key exculpatory material.
Asked to respond to that charge, Epstein acknowledged internal affairs missed some information, notably, the audio tape.
“I don’t think it was our best hour,” he said of the probe.