Christopher Peak Photo
Killer’s mom, Nitza Cruz (at left), outside courthouse after judge cut her son’s life sentence to 35 years.
Latin King Luis Noel Cruz put two bullets into the head of a potential witness, then held down a perceived snitch as a fellow gang member fired four shots into him.
A quarter-century later, the pain caused by that double murder hasn’t changed. But something else has: How society sentences the teenagers who perpetrate such crimes.
An emotional morning in federal court Tuesday brought both realities home.
U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall, a Clinton appointee, made that difference clear on Tuesday morning as she considered resentencing Cruz, who’d been put away for life without parole for the murders of the two New Haveners, based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent guidance on juvenile offenders.
During a three-hour hearing in the Church Street courthouse, Judge Hall recounted Cruz’s childhood on the mean streets of Bridgeport, heard devastating testimony from the victim Tyler White’s New Haven family about how the murders broke them, and questioned a social worker about whether Cruz had truly changed.
Cruz also spoke up for himself.
“I can confidently tell everyone I’m definitely not that stupid, close-minded kid who hurt so many people with my actions,” he said, as he testified that he planned to work with at-risk youth — “the not-yet victims and not-yet offenders” — if the judge would one day release him. “My hope is that will be even the smallest consolation, that others wouldn’t have to go through what I’ve put them through. This is not what I want to be known for, Your Honor.”
Weighing that evidence, Judge Hall ultimately decided to cut Cruz, now 43 years old, a break, dropping his sentence to 35 years in prison.
What He Did
On a May night in 1994, around 4 a.m., Cruz was doing his part to keep law enforcement from taking down his gang, the Latin Kings, who’d sold large quantities of powdered cocaine, crack and heroin throughout Connecticut, while murdering at least nine people. The month prior, police had already raided one of the gang’s stash-houses on Quinnipiac Avenue, seizing $11,000 in cash and at least 160 grams of crack.
Going after the perceived snitch, Cruz climbed in the back seat of a Honda parked in Bridgeport. He sat behind Tyler White, a young man he had never met and the son of a New Haven detective; and Arosmo “Ra-Ra” Diaz, the target whom the Latin Kings wanted him to pick off.
Cruz first put the .45 caliber handgun to the back of White’s head and pulled the trigger twice, killing him immediately. He then got out of the car and took aim at Diaz, who’d taken off while pleading for his life. Cruz’s gun jammed. But Cruz chased Diaz down, tackled him and held him to the ground while a fellow gang member, Alexis Antuna, shot him four times in the back of the head and torso.
The next day, Antuna called a higher-up in the Latin Kings, Richard Morales, on a line that the feds were monitoring. Here’s what they said:
Antuna: An, uhm, I think we fucked up.
Morales: For real? Why do you say that?
Antuna: The man’s really a snitch, yo, now. I could prove to you that dude that was with him?
Morales: Yeah?
Antuna: He’s a detective’s son.
Morales: Oh, I know that. I know that. Hell yeah.
Antuna: Yo, we fucked up.
They both cracked up laughing, as the exchange ended.
“Child” Redefined
Social worker: Cruz is not the same teenager he was.
After being convicted at trial, Cruz continued to deny responsibility. In a letter he wrote to probation officers, he lied and said he wasn’t even a member of the Latin Kings.
“I don’t kill people, never have, never will,” Cruz wrote. “I don’t think is fair for me to spend my life in jail when its clear from the evidence that I am not one of the perpetrators and only got convicted because of a spill over, not a good job by my lawyer.”
Federal prosecutors called it a “cold, deliberate and premeditated murder” that still deserved a life sentence. They urged Hall to maintain that sentence Tuesday.
Jozlyn Hall, a clinical social worker who has worked with Cruz, however, said he has changed over the years, and cognitively, is not the same teenager who committed the murder.
Judge Hall said Tuesday that she based her decision largely on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Miller v. Alabama. In that 2012 case, the high court’s justices were deciding whether life in prison without parole was an allowable punishment for a 14-year-old who’d clubbed a man with baseball bat, then burned him alive inside his trailer.
The four liberal justices, joined by swing-vote Anthony Kennedy, ruled that sentence constituted a “cruel and unusual punishment,” in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The four conservative justices disagreed, saying the high court’s job was overstepping its duties in setting a moral standard for the country.
Since then, judges have been interpreting just who counts as a “child,” and Hall has been more willing than others to extend the high court’s reasoning to those who are over 18 years old.
Based on the latest developmental research, experts are suggesting that teenagers might be able to argue that their sentences should be reviewed all the way up to age 24.
While she didn’t want to assign a brightline for adulthood, Hall said she’d consider Cruz, who was just five months past his 18th birthday when he killed White and Diaz, close enough to a juvenile to review his lifetime sentence. She said that also fit with a general trend in sentencing, as only one 18-year-old had been given life in prison without parole in the federal system from 2010 to 2015, according to a U.S. Sentencing Commission report.
Another nearby federal judge, however, a New Yorker presiding over the trials of three murderous gang members from the Bronx who were between 18 and 22 years old, has disagreed, still handing down life without parole to youngsters. That case is currently being challenged before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
The lawyers in Hall’s courtroom on Tuesday sparred too, arguing about how much responsibility a young adult should take for their actions, even if the teenage brain isn’t fully developed.
Was Cruz fully culpable at 18 years old when he put a gun against White’s head? Was Cruz fully culpable at 20 years old when he lied about committing the crime at his initial sentencing? Was Cruz fully culpable at 26 years old when he tried to cut ties with the Latin Kings? Was Cruz fully culpable at 43 years old when he still wouldn’t give up a childhood friend who’d been involved in the double murder?
“He was mature enough not to leave a bystander as a witness; so he decided to shoot Tyler White in the head twice,” Patricia Stolfi Collins, an assistant United States attorney, wrote in a brief. “And he was mature enough to know that the business of murder, once begun, should not be left unfinished; and so he helped chase and wrestle down Diaz, as he pled for his life, so that his accomplice could shoot him again and again.”
Elizabeth White’s Plea
Family members of the victims, including Tyler’s sister, Elizabeth White, said that he deserved to stay behind bars. She recounted, in excruciating detail, the last time that she saw her brother: in a casket, his head lolling off a pillow to reveal that the back of his head was flat, his skull missing where Cruz had put a bullet.
“I was too young to attend the trial, but what I did understand was a sentence to life in prison. That gave me peace of mind: Nothing will ever bring him back, but I knew he’d never be released,” said White, who’s now a city cop.
“But I never knew this day would come. That peace of mind is gone, the wound has reopened and the healing has halted. I thought he’d remain in prison for the rest of his life, and here I am in the same room as my brother’s killer, the one who pulled the trigger and put two bullets in him. I never thought I’d have to hear his voice or see his face.”
Elizabeth White’s and Tyler White’s father is Billy White, a retired New Haven detective. As Elizabeth White testified, the murder has continued to haunt the family to this day, driving Tyler’s mom to attempt suicide, two relatives recounted.
Judge Hall’s Reasoning
Contributed Photo
Judge Janet C. Hall
Judge Hall said she wasn’t sure what sentence she’d assign if she were presiding over Cruz’s sentencing today, with Miller as the law of the land.
Her decision was clearer a quarter-century later, she added, because she didn’t have to worry about whether Cruz would rehabilitate himself in prison; indeed, she said, he already had. The Bureau of Prisons said that Cruz hadn’t had a single ticket since he’d first been incarcerated, and Hall said that it seemed like Cruz had signed up for nearly “every program” offered in the penitentiary.
Still, it wasn’t easy for Judge Hall to come up with a fair sentence, as she paused and sighed and apologized during her decision.
After two decades in federal lockup, Cruz had lost all the hair on the crown of his head. Wearing his tan prison issue, he barely came up to his defense attorney’s shoulders. He peered through glasses, and at one point, he told the judge he couldn’t hear. As Hall read the sentence, Cruz pressed a headphone into his left ear.
In the years since the conviction, Cruz “has acted in a way, which, to me, would be an exhibit if there was a Miller case today,” Hall said. “He has demonstrated that youth are not irreparably depraved, even when they commit the worst case imagined — or in this case, acts.”
Outside court, Cruz’s family members said they were relieved by the reduced sentence that now has an end date. “He is ready for a second chance, and most importantly, he will not squander it,” said Nitza Cruz, his mom. But she also said she understood and appreciated the “unbearable pain” of the victims’ families. She said she was “truly sorry” and she asked for their forgiveness.
Federal prosecutors said they are considering an appeal.
“We appreciate Judge Hall’s thorough review of this matter,” U.S. Attorney John H. Durham said in a statement, “but we respectfully disagree with the revised sentence and will be communicating with the Department of Justice as we consider an appeal.”