Gould and Taylor/ DOC
Declaring that two convicted murderers suffered a “manifest injustice,” a judge ordered two New Haven men set free after serving 16 years —but prosecutors have blocked their release, for now.
George Gould and Ronald Taylor (pictured left and right) are currently serving 80-year sentences for the murder of Fair Haven bodega owner Eugenio DeLeon Vega on July 4, 1993. After two key state witnesses came forward and admitted they were coerced by police to give false testimony, Taylor and Gould have been fighting for their freedom through a habeas corpus suit.
Click here, here, and here for previous in-depth articles on the case by the Advocate‘s Betsy Yagla and Caleb Smith.
In a blistering, 58-page decision Wednesday — labeled “unprecedented” by one longtime criminal defense attorney — Superior Court Judge Stanley Fuger, Jr. took their side. He ordered the men be released from prison immediately, that their convictions and sentences be tossed out, and that the finding of probable cause and even the arrest warrants all be vacated.
“It is now an inescapable conclusion that a manifest injustice has been done to these two men,” Judge Fuger wrote.
George Gould and Ronald Taylor served 16 years in prison “for a crime that, based upon all of the available evidence, they did not commit,” he found.
Click here to read Fuger’s decision.
If upheld, the decision means Gould and Taylor would be set free, and the state would have to start from scratch if it wanted to bring a new trial.
Peter Tsimbidaros of Fairfield, Taylor’s attorney, said he visited both men in person Wednesday to deliver the news. Taylor, who has been diagnosed with cancer, lay handcuffed to a hospital bed at the UConn medical center. Gould is at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield. He is represented by attorney Joseph Visone of Mendon, Mass.
Tsimbidaros said it was hard to explain the great relief these men expressed after working so hard for their freedom. “They were both very emotional and appreciative,” he said.
However, the bells of freedom were interrupted by an intervention from the state.
On the heels of Fuger’s decision Wednesday, Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Michael O’Hare filed an “emergency motion for stay of execution” with the state appellate court. O’Hare asked the court to put the case on hold to give the state time to review the decision. O’Hare said the judge only faxed his office the final page of the 58-page decision, which orders the prisoners’ immediate release without an automatic waiting period for appeals.
Fuger’s orders would mean “the immediate release of two individuals who have been convicted of a brutal homicide,” without giving the state time for an “orderly” appeal, O’Hare protested. Click here to read his motion.
The Appellate Court’s Chief Judge Joseph P. Flynn granted the motion Wednesday, effectively delaying Judge Fuger’s orders, and the prisoners’ release until Monday at 2 p.m.
… And So Shall This Case Fall
Fuger’s decision uses passionate language in parts, and at times reads more like magazine feature than a court document.
“A senseless, cold-blooded, execution style murder was committed in the early morning hours of July 4th, 1993,” Fuger begins. Eugenio Deleon Vega went to his small Fair Haven bodega, La Casa Green, to open shop at 5:08 a.m. “Before the hour of six AM, before he could even arrange the morning newspapers, he was dead. He had been executed, shot once in the left temple with a projectile from a .38 caliber semiautomatic pistol. These are indisputable facts.”
Fuger sets the scene for his sharp reproof with a blazing sub-header on Page One.
“This case rises and falls on the testimony of Doreen Stiles,” the sub-header reads, quoting New Haven’s Senior Assistant State Attorney James Clark’s words during Taylor and Gould’s 1995 Superior Court trial.
“No truer statement has ever been spoken,” Fuger wrote.
Stiles, a drug-addicted police informant, was the only supposed eyewitness who placed the defendants at the murder scene. DNA evidence found at the murder scene did not match Gould or Taylor. The state’s case rested on Stiles’ testimony, as Clark openly admitted during the trial. Stiles came forward and recanted her statement in 2006, allowing the defendants to open a joint habeas corpus claim of actual innocence, based on new evidence.
It is “crystal clear,” wrote Fuger, “that the sole piece of evidence, the only thread that links George Gould and Ronald Taylor to this senseless murder is the testimony of Doreen Stiles. If this tether breaks, then there is absolutely nothing that implicates these two men.”
“At the trial of the case in 1995, the case rose because Doreen Stiles made that linkage; at the trial of the habeas petition in 2009, the case must fall, once again, based upon the testimony of Doreen Stiles,” Fuger wrote.
Stiles originally testified under oath that she saw Gould enter the store, heard a gunshot, and saw Gould and Taylor leave the murder scene. During a habeas trial in 2009, Judge Fuger got what he called a unique chance to hear fresh testimony from a witness, and compare it with testimony from a prior trial. Stiles, now drug-free and confined to a wheelchair, confessed during the habeas trial that she had lied under oath and was never at the murder scene at all. A second state witness, Mary Boyd, also recanted her statements during the habeas trial.
Fuger said his habeas case came down to a question of credibility — Is Stiles lying now about her recantation? Or was she lying then? The answer lay in her demeanor, he said.
“In a nutshell, this Court finds that the demeanor of Doreen Stiles on the witness stand in the habeas trial is far more conducive to finding her to be credible when she recanted her earlier testimony than when she initially delivered that earlier testimony.” In the first trial, the witness looked “drawn, haggard, and was clearly annoyed at the whole proceeding.” She was “hostile” and not polite. In the second trial, her whole demeanor changed, and she no longer had a “combatant, impatient” air about her, the judge found. “She was polite, thoughtful, in no way evasive and presented clear and uncompromised testimony.”
Police Coercion
Why did Stiles lie during the first trial?
“Simply put, Ms. Stiles, in 1993, was a deeply troubled woman, addicted to heroin (10 bags a day), and engaging in prostitution to fuel her habit,” Fuger wrote. She was “dopesick” on heroin when cops picked her up on a prostitution charge later that July. Detectives, “in particular, Det. Brian Sullivan,” told her “if she did not tell them what they needed to hear, that she would be taken downstairs and booked on the charge of prostitution,” Fuger’s decision reads.
Detective Sullivan told her that he would help her buy heroin “if she told them what happened.” Only then did Stiles, guided by “not-so-subtle hints” from detectives, pick out Gould and Taylor from a photo lineup and — “in response to the suggestive questions of the police” — come up with a story about witnessing the murder.
Two detectives then gave her $60, and drove her to a house on Wolcott Street so she could buy heroin. Detectives later took her out for a dinner of stuffed shrimp, and took her out to buy more heroin, Stiles testified. Police denied giving Stiles money to buy drugs.
Fuger went on to poke holes in the state’s case, which he said “is that the petitioners were two crack addicts who had been committing several small street robberies to obtain money with which to buy crack cocaine.” He ran down several details of the state’s case that did not match up.
In a scathing closing, Fuger said the case completely falls apart without Stiles’ testimony.
“In short, the finding that Doreen Stiles was not telling the truth in 1993 – 1995 not only renders the ultimate conviction unreliable, it wholly vitiates all of the proceedings against George Gould and Ronald Taylor. These cases, in fact, go way beyond ‘actual innocence.’ The criminal cases never should have been initiated in the first place! These men deserve immediate relief.”
“Unprecedented,” “Breathtaking”
“Wow. Wow,” said longtime New Haven civil rights lawyer Norm Pattis upon hearing the news Thursday.
He called the decision “breathtaking” and “unprecedented in my mind.”
Habeas corpus relief is rarely granted, and if a judge overturns a conviction, it’s most often because new DNA analysis comes into play and invalidates a conclusion that was made in good faith. The judge in this case made a much more far-reaching conclusion, Pattis noted.
“Fuger went an extra step and said, based on what was known at this time, this should never have happened,” Pattis noted. “This is more than an honest mistake.”
Pattis called the decision “incredibly encouraging.”
“It gives hope to others who are wrongfully convicted,” he said.
“What’s chilling,” Pattis said, is there are other people in prison based on mistakes and sloppy police work. “It’s no mystery, a lot of these cases involve men of color, who remain a dispensable class” in modern society.
Pattis said the state now faces a tough question: “What do you do when you’ve stolen someone’s life with a lie?”
The legislature should act quickly and ask the state to pony up to repay these men for their suffering, he said.
“Restitution is a small word,” he said. “I don’t think enough can be done for these men.”