34 Years Later, Murder’s Pain Remains

For a sense of why Reese Green isn’t ready to bless his brother’s killer’s quest for a second chance outside of prison, accompany him on a visit to Beaverdale Memorial Park.

Green and his friend Rodney Williams walked along a quiet grassy expanse of Beaverdale one sunlit afternoon this week until they found the stone marker — or, really, markers — they were looking for.

One marker was for Javan Green, Reese’s older brother, who was shot and killed on Dixwell Avenue at only 21 years old more than three decades ago. 

One marker was for Warner Murphy, Reese’s uncle and a Vietnam war veteran who died before he reached 40.

Two nearby markers were for Sallie and John Murphy, Reese’s maternal grandparents, the latter of whom lived long enough to bury and mourn his wife, his child, and his murdered grandson — a set of sorrows Reese still remembers his grandfather saying no person should have to endure.

Green took this reporter on that tour of his serene family plot several days after Kevin Stanley, a now-51-year-old New Havener who shot Javan to death at Dixwell and Argyle in November 1989, had a video-streamed court hearing for his application to reduce his 60-year prison sentence.

Stanley, who was 18 at the time of Javan’s murder, and his advocates at that hearing argued that the 33 years Stanley has already served behind bars is enough. They argued that he has been rehabilitated and is a mature adult now, that he deserves a chance to be free again so that he can mentor others and help prevent them from committing the same mistakes he did.

Green, Javan’s younger brother, and Williams, who was Javan’s best friend, spoke up at that same hearing along with Green’s sister Loni to urge state Superior Court Judge Elpedio Vitale to turn down Stanley’s sentence modification request. 

They noted that Stanley’s brother and friends and family and supporters can still speak and visit with their incarcerated loved one, but, because of a violent choice that Stanley made on Nov. 7, 1989, Green’s family don’t have — and never will have — that same ability to connect.

The hearing itself took place against the backdrop of a broader statewide political debate about reduced prison sentences. Gov. Ned Lamont and the Board of Pardons and Paroles have recently put a pause on the state’s commutation process in the face of criticism from Republican lawmakers and crime victims and advocates that too many people have been let out of prison over the past year. (Click here to listen to Wednesday’s episode of WNPR’s ​“The Wheelhouse,” in which New Havener and statewide criminal justice reform expert Mike Lawlor weighs in on the history, purpose, and present controversy around commutations.)

During a follow-up interview on Wednesday, this reporter spoke with Green and Williams on the front steps of Green’s family’s longtime home on Dixwell Avenue near Pond Street, as well as among the burial plots a short drive away at Beaverdale Memorial Park. 

Over the course of the interview, Green and Williams repeated many of those same arguments that they made during last Friday’s sentence modification hearing about why they do not think Stanley should be released from prison. (Judge Vitale has not yet handed down a decision in that case.)

“I feel that, in crimes, if you’ve taken a life, rape, you need to serve your sentence,” Green said. ​“If you’re truly remorseful, sit back and do your time.”

Green stressed how angry he still is — about his brother’s shooting death 34 years ago, and now about his brother’s killer’s application to get of prison.

“Death is longer than 33 years,” Green said. Williams agreed: ​“Gone is gone.”

In a Thursday morning phone interview, Stanley’s attorney, Alex Taubes, acknowledged the anger and hurt that Javan’s family and friends still feel — and will forever feel — because of his murder.

“I can only respond to [Reese’s] anger with empathy, because it is a righteous anger, and not all anger is unjustified,” Taubes said. ​“When a young person’s life is taken, we should be angry, and that anger perhaps should never go away.” 

But, he continued, ​“public policy and the appropriate sentence cannot be be based solely on anger.” He argued that Stanley has accepted his responsibility for Javan’s murder and has served many years in prison for that crime. ​“As a society, we have to ask: Is continued incarceration necessary given its very, very substantial costs to all of us in society?” (See more on Taubes’s response below, and click here to read a full article about Stanley’s sentence modification hearing, where Stanley apologized to Green’s family ​“for the terrible decision I made to pick up a gun and resolve a dispute.”)

"He Had My Back"

While Green and Williams spent part of Wednesday’s interview explaining why they believe Stanley should remain incarcerated, they also took the time to talk about Javan as more than just a victim of senseless gun violence.

They spoke about him as an older brother, a friend, a loving son, and a devoted father to a young child.

They recalled him as a carpenter who took pride in his work, a member of a tight-knit Newhallville community — and a family anchored in the neighborhood, until his murder shattered much of that sense of place and sent Green’s parents and siblings scattering out of state.

Reese, who will turn 53 years old next month, is the youngest of four siblings. One sister currently lives in Mississippi, where their dad spent much of his adult life as an ironworker and farmer with over 200 acres of land. Another sister currently lives in North Carolina, where she’s looking after their mom, who couldn’t bear to stay in New Haven after Javan’s murder and moved south instead. 

The Greens’ parents bought their first house — a two-and-a-quarter-story Colonial on Dixwell Avenue — in 1978. Reese still lives in that same house, which he now owns and has kept in the family.

He said that Javan, like all of the kids in his family, went to Jackie Robinson for middle school and to Hillhouse for high school.

“I was born and raised in this community,” Reese said. Even though he and Javan would ​“fight all the time” as brothers do as kids, ​“he always had my back.”

Javan spent a six-year chunk of his youth in Mississippi with their dad, Reese said, before moving back north to New Haven for a better chance to get a good education and work. He remembered telling him that the Newhallville of their youth was not the same, was a more dangerous place to be, when he returned in the late 1980s.

When he came back to New Haven, Reese said, Javan had a son, Byron. ​“His son was his world.” He wasn’t ​“into the street life,” Reese recalled about his brother. He was a ​“hard-working, law-abiding citizen” and a trained carpenter whose ​“primary focus was providing for his family.”

Williams, who grew up just a few houses up from the Greens on Dixwell, remembered going fishing with Javan by Jackie Robinson School.

“He had gold hair” then, he remembered with a smile. They spent a lot of time together, as classmates, as neighbors, as young fathers living in and building their families in Newhallville. Williams pointed to the corner of Dorman Street and Dixwell and said he stood at that very corner on Nov. 7, 1989, talking with Javan about going to vote for John C. Daniels for mayor.

That was the last conversation he had with him.

Later that day, following a dispute over a rock that a kid had thrown at Javan’s girlfriend’s car window, Javan would be dead from shots fired by Stanley. 

Back On "Model Block"

In between talking about Javan and Stanley, Reese and Williams also spoke fondly about the Newhallville of their youth: the nearby Dixwell corner florist, a ​“little club” called Ernie B’s, Goldberg’s Electric shop, Kramer’s bakery and donuts, Venice pizza, Visel’s still-standing pharmacy, the ​“model block” of owner-occupied homes on Pond Street.

Reese said that he, as the youngest in the family, was the one in the streets getting in trouble those days. Not Javan. He said people thought there must have been a mistake when they learned that Javan was the Green brother who had been killed. Surely it must have been Reese.

Reese said he’s been shot four times over the course of his life in New Haven and was fortunate enough to survive. Javan wasn’t so lucky. Neither was a best friend of Reese’s who was shot and killed in their youth on Argyle Street. 

Reese is now a union carpenter who works for a construction company in Wallingford and who has his own construction small business on the side.

The past few years have seen great hardship for Reese and his family. His daughter died in 2019. His dad passed away a year later. One of his sons died at around that same time. And his nephew, Javan’s son Byron, took his own life a year later after struggling for so much of his young life with depression. 

Reese is the only one of his siblings who remains in New Haven, though his sisters did testify at Friday’s sentence modification hearing. 

Why did he decide to stay, especially given that his house is just blocks away from where his brother was murdered? 

“This is where I’m from,” Reese said. 

He paused, then said there’s another reason he stayed. Always in the back of his mind, he said, has been the worry about when his brother’s killer would seek to get out of prison.

Now that time has come. ​“It’s surreal,” Reese said.

He thought back to the night of Javan’s murder, and the days and weeks and years after of reckoning with that loss. After his grandmother’s death and, years later, his uncle’s death, Reese remembered vividly his grandfather saying: No man should have to bury his wife, no man should have to bury his son, and no man ​“should damn have to bury his grandkid.”

How has he persevered through so many hardships over the course of his life? And how did he decide to get out of street life before he too ended up on one or the other side of a gun?

“Something my father instilled in me,” Reese said, is ​“listen to yourself. No one loves you like you love yourself.” And so ​“I listened to myself.”

Asked what he would like New Haveners and Independent readers and other members of the public to know about what life is like after losing a sibling to gun violence, Reese said, ​“It’s a living hell.”

He encouraged those who have also lost loved ones to violence and for whom the person convicted of committing that violence is in prison to sign up with the court’s victim services. That way they’ll get an update from the court if and when that person is looking to get out of prison. (Reese said he wasn’t registered with the victim services program. He found out about Stanley’s hearing only because victim services tried to find his dad in Mississippi. His dad had passed away by that time, and the victim services advocates were directed to reach out to Reese.)

“Victims,” Reese said, ​“have a voice.”

And, he and Williams repeated, they and others who were close to Javan would like to see Stanley remain in prison. ​“This was beyond senseless violence.”

Taubes: Greeting Anger With Empathy

On Thursday, the Independent contacted Stanley’s attorney, Alex Taubes, to hear his response to the hurt still felt by Reese and Williams — as well as to the victim’s side’s calls in this case to have the court keep Stanley in prison, even with the 33 years he’s already served.

He acknowledged time and again that the victims’ anger does matter, and is real. As is the responsibility that Stanley has taken for his crime, and his growth into maturity during his many decades behind bars. 

“I can only respond to the anger with empathy and with the steadfast belief that the appropriate sentence for Mr. Stanley has already been served,” Taubes said.

He noted that the white man who killed Yale researcher Annie Le received a sentence shorter than Stanley did, whose 60-year sentence was the maximum the judge could give at the time.

“As a society, we have now recognized in the way that we did not in 1989 that 18-year-olds, their brains are still developing, their characters are still forming, their ability to resist impulses and bad peer influences is still growing,’ he said. That’s why, thanks to a 2015 law, if Stanley had been 17 when he committed his crime, he’d already automatically have been entitled to a hearing like what took place on Friday.

Stanley received ​“the absolute maximum sentence that a judge could have given out at the time,” Taubes repeated about his client’s 60-year sentence.

“Now, 34 years later, as a society, we can still be angry, and we do not have to forgive Kevin Stanley, and he will continue to be punished by having a felony criminal record that will always follow him. And he will always have to live with being the person who committed this act.” 

He accepts that responsibility, Taubes said. And he does feel sorry. And, while his record in prison is not perfect, he has ​“shown improvement” and he has helped people. ​“I have never received more letters of support from people in prison” speaking in support of Stanley’s release, he said.

As a lawyer who represents victims of violence, those accused of committing violence, and those convicted of violent crimes who are currently in prison, Taubes said that ​“those two groups, of incarcerated people and victims, are not mutually exclusive.” Many people who are currently behind bars for violent crimes have also lost loved ones to violence.

Taubes noted that Connecticut is one of the only states in the country that ​“has no restorative justice aspect to its victim services programming,” that he wishes that, when a sentence modification application were filed, ​“there could be some kind of contact where we all can talk about what we feel and what we want.”

And he returned to importance of listening to victims throughout such a process, even as he is representing someone convicted of murder who is seeking to get free after 33 years in prison.

“We empathize with their continuing pain. That pain is going to continue no matter how long Mr. Stanley remains incarcerated,” he said. And ​“as long as someone is locked up, they will seek freedom.”

He noted that prison sentences in America are ​“way, way longer than” in any other country. The final decade or two decades of such a long sentence ​“in my opinion need to be justified more than only be retribution,” especially when the person being punished was very young when they committed their crime, has medical concerns, and has been rehabilitated.

“The merciful thing for all involved is to allow Mr. Stanley to reenter society with a strong network of support services that are available to him now that may not be available to him in 10 or 15 years.”