A sketch that police drew of the man who killed Mitch Dubey doesn’t look much like Tashaun Fair. Is the sketch unreliable? Or did cops get the wrong guy?
Those questions emerged Tuesday on the second day of a murder trial taking place in state Superior Court on Church Street.
Fair, who’s 20, of Newhallville, is accused of killing Dubey, a friendly bike mechanic and underground-music enthusiast, during an attempted robbery in Dubey’s home on March 24, 2011. Fair faces 25 years to life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty of the crime; his lawyers contend that police got the wrong guy.
Public defender Tom Ullmann slowly built his case for Fair’s innocence Tuesday in Judge Jon C. Blue’s Courtroom 4A, where friends and family of both sides filled seats to capacity for a second day in a row. Jurors heard Tuesday from several witnesses who were in Dubey’s Bassett Street home when a gunman knocked on the door, sought to rob Dubey, then fatally shot him in the chest.
Facebook Photo
Dubey.
No one who witnessed the crime is able to identify Fair as the killer, according to prosecutor Jack P. Doyle. There’s no physical evidence placing him at the scene. The state’s case hinges instead on a key witness who claims he served as a lookout to the robbery, and saw Fair go into the house. The defense, meanwhile, argues that the alleged lookout may have done the crime himself.
Ullmann continued Tuesday to try to demonstrate Fair’s innocence based on a key detail: Freckles.
Ullmann did so by grilling one of Dubey’s friends over descriptions he gave of the killer.
The friend, who was visiting Dubey from out of town, got the closest view of the killer of any of the surviving witnesses.
The friend testified Monday that he was having dinner at Dubey’s house on March 24, 2011 when he heard a knock at the door. The friend stood right behind Dubey as Dubey opened the door. A man with a gun entered the house, forced Dubey and the friend onto a couch, then shot Dubey after Dubey told him: “Hey man, you don’t need that gun,” the friend testified.
On Tuesday, the friend took the stand for a second day. The friend, a bearded farmhand and welder from Maine, appeared in court wearing a red plaid button-down shirt, as he had on Monday.
For most of his time on Monday, he had received non-confrontational questions from Doyle, the state’s clean-shaven, straight-faced prosecutor.
On Tuesday, the friend faced a more confrontational line of questioning from Ullmann, a hard-charging, white-bearded public defender known for taking on difficult, high-profile cases, such as the Cheshire death penalty triple murder. Ullmann, who has a hairline fracture in his left knee, paced back and forth between the witness box and his desk using a black metal cane.
Ullmann grilled the witness over descriptions he had given of the suspect — descriptions that, Ullmann sought to show the jury, didn’t match Fair. For example, the witness described the perpetrator as being 220 pounds, or 250 pounds — far heavier than Fair. He also told police the killer had “a lot of either freckles or kind of looked mottled or like he might have had bad, like, skin.”
The crux of the interrogation surrounded a sketch (pictured) that has been submitted as evidence in the trial. The sketch was drawn by Detective Dan Reed, a Maine police officer who visited the witness 18 days after the crime in order to come up with a composite of the killer’s face.
The sketch shows a rash of freckles across the suspect’s face — freckles that Fair doesn’t have.
Reading from a written record Reed compiled from that session, Ullmann cross-examined the witness about the descriptions the witness gave Reed.
The witness gave the sketch artist the following description: African/American male, “age range 27 to 31,” dark eyes, 6 feet tall, 250 pounds, “heavy/thick” build, no unusual teeth, dark hair, no glasses, and complexion “smooth with freckles,” according to the written account Ullmann read from in court.
As the detective drew, the witness gave feedback, according to the written account. The witness said the nose was “right on.”
Ullmann focused on this description because it doesn’t fit Fair: The height, race, and hair color match. But other features don’t: Fair was 18 at the time of the crime, is far lighter than 250 pounds, has a thin build, and doesn’t have freckles. He sought to submit this description into evidence.
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Tashaun Fair and his baby daughter.
The witness thwarted Ullmann’s effort by distancing himself from the sketch. On Monday, the witness said the sketch artist took one skin trait he remembered seeing — a freckle — and exaggerated it. When Ullmann asked if the picture was a “fair representation of how the witness looked that night,” the witness replied, “no.”
On Tuesday, the witness distanced himself even further. He said he didn’t remember the conversation he had with the sketch artist, on which the sketch is based.
“I was in a little room, then he offered me some dip. That’s all I remember about that day,” the witness said.
His lack of memory helped the prosecution in one way: Because the witness couldn’t corroborate the notes about his conversation with the sketch artist, Judge Blue ruled the notes couldn’t be admitted into evidence, because they count as hearsay.
But the sketch, and the conversation about it, also helped the defense: It emphasized the difference between the witness’s description of Fair and what Fair actually looks like. The nose does look quite like Tashaun’s, but the freckles, eyes and eyebrows don’t.
“It doesn’t look like him, period,” declared Tashaun’s stepdad, Larry Daniels, a custodian at Yale, when asked about the sketch.
Taking another turn to question the witness, prosecutor Doyle pointed out that the witness saw only a portion of the killer’s face, because a hood was pulled down to his eyebrows and a T‑shirt pulled up to his nose.
Doyle asked the witness why, in a May meeting with New Haven police, the witness was unable to identify the killer out of a photo array. The array contained eight photos, including one of Fair.
“I have a really hard time morally pointing the finger,” the witness said. “I don’t think I could ever, I don’t know, condemn someone based on my recollection. I don’t trust myself enough to” do that.
Doyle also pointed out that while the witness used the word “freckles” to describe the killer’s face, he also said it could have been “bad skin.”
Ullmann countered that the witness had told police that the killer had “freckles, a lot of them,” and at another point said “brown freckles.”
How much stake the jury puts in that sketch — and in those freckles — is one factor that will sway their final decision as they weigh Fair’s guilt or innocence of four charges: felony murder, first-degree robbery, home invasion, and carrying a pistol without a permit.
The jury will also hear from the state’s key witness who told cops he accompanied Fair as the lookout to the crime. And they may hear evidence stemming from FBI reports that cite informants who pegged that key witness — not Fair — as the killer.
“Keep Breathing”
The first witness who testified Tuesday got the closest view of the killer.
The jury also heard from three roommates who were farther away from the murder. The roommates got to know each other through the underground punk music scene. They moved to New Haven in November of 2010. They would host friends’ bands for concerts in their basement. Three of the roommates, including Dubey, were “straight-edge,” meaning they didn’t smoke, drink or do drugs.
With a large crew of friends and family looking on in support, the roommates gave emotional testimony about the last moments of Dubey’s life.
Two of the roommates are sisters. The younger sister, who was 20 at the time, was in the dining room when the intruder came in the front door. She said her dog, Ruby, a golden retriever/ chocolate lab mix, ran up to the intruder. The intruder yelled to get the dog away.
The sister called her dog over. Then she watched the intruder point a gun at Dubey, she said. She heard a gunshot, then ran to Mitchell’s side.
“We lifted the shirt and saw blood in his bellybutton,” she recalled. “We lifted the shirt more and saw the bullet-hole in his chest.”
She broke down as she recalled her final moments with Mitch.
“I was trying to hold his head still,” and I was talking to him, she said. “I was telling him to keep his eyes open and to keep breathing. I was telling him to keep breathing and that he didn’t do anything wrong.”
Like the other witnesses, she didn’t get a full view of the suspect’s face — she said she could see only a small portion of his face below his eyebrows and above the middle of his nose. She could not identify him in a photo array — which contained a photo of Fair — when cops met with her on May 12, 2011.
Her older sister, who was upstairs at the time of the killing, said she didn’t see the intruder. She called 911 and ran downstairs.
The fourth roommate, a man from Guilford who’s now 29, also rushed to Dubey’s side after he was shot. He and his girlfriend, the youngest sister, stretched out Dubey’s body on the floor. Then they stayed with him as they waited for help.
He paused, shedding tears on the stand.
“He was starting to get a little pale. He was really struggling,” the roommate continued. “You could hear some gurgling noises.”
“We both told him that we loved him … and that help was on the way.”
The fourth roommate also could not identify the suspect. He said he saw only a small portion of the man’s face. He described the man as “6 feet tall, medium build.” He “wasn’t super-skinny, and he wasn’t super-fat.”
The man was the final occupant of the house who’s expected to testify. The state plans to bring on the medical examiner, crime scene investigator and its key witness in coming days.
Previous Independent stories on the case:
• 2 Families, 2 Worlds — & A Quest For Justice
• Does Tashaun Fair Have Freckles?
• State Seeks Informant’s Name; Feds Seek To Hide It
• Defense Attorney Files Speedy Trial Motion In Mitch Dubey Murder Case
• Freckles, FBI Reports Spark “Innocent” Claim
• Supporters Emerge For Dubey Murder Suspect
• Dubey’s Killer Allegedly Panicked, Shot