Melissa Bailey File Photo
After a judge overturned two murder convictions he fought for 15 years ago, James G. Clark made no apologies.
Clark (at left in file photo), an assistant state’s attorney based in New Haven, tried the murder case that left George Gould and Ron Taylor with 80-year prison sentences. They have spent 16 years behind bars in connection to the 1993 murder.
After a star witness recanted her story, Superior Court Judge Stanley Fuger concluded last week that the men should never have been arrested at all. The men suffered “manifest injustice,” are actually innocent, and should be released from prison immediately, he ruled. He ordered that their convictions, sentences, finding of probable cause, and even their arrest warrants, be tossed out.
The state is fighting ruling through an appeal. Click here to read a motion stating the grounds for the state’s appeal.
Gould and Taylor remain in prison. Their lawyers are fighting for their release in a hearing Wednesday in Rockville Superior Court.
In an interview in his New Haven office, Clark found fault with Judge Fuger’s ruling and predicted the state could win an appeal.
“I think there was error in Judge Fuger’s decision,” he said, “errors that could easily lead to a reversal of his decision.”
Clark — who’s retiring soon from the state after spending his final year on a DNA-driven innocence commission — said he was not involved in the state’s decision to appeal. Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Michael O’Hare is making those calls. Clark was the prosecutor in Gould’s and Taylor’s 1995 joint trial before 12 jurors in Superior Court in New Haven. Clark said he has had no role in the case since then, except as a witness in the 2009 habeas trial before Judge Fuger.
After Judge Fuger unleashed an impassioned decision that turned the case on its head last week, Clark did not budge. He argud the new evidence does not change whether a jury would find the men guilty.
“Inherently Suspect”
Clark said there’s more to the story that’s not being told — and that the judge blocked the state from telling during the habeas trial. The “more” surrounds the circumstances of a key recantation by the state’s star witness, a heroin-addicted prostitute named Doreen Stiles.
Stiles was the only witness in the trial to place Gould and Taylor at the scene where Eugenio Deleon Vega was bound and shot, execution-style, inside his Grand Avenue bodega on July 4, 1993. Her testimony was central to the case.
“This case rises and falls on the testimony of Doreen Stiles,” Clark told the jury during the New Haven trial.
Fuger found that the case “fell” when Stiles changed her story. Stiles came forward in 2006 and recanted. She said she was a drug-sick addict whom police coerced — by buying her dinner, putting her up in a fancy hotel, and driving her to buy drugs — into framing the men. During the habeas trial, she testified that she was not at the scene of the murder at all.
Fuger said the habeas case came down to a question of credibility — Is Stiles lying now about her recantation? Or was she lying then?
Fuger found the latter.
Clark said he agrees with the central question, but not the judge’s conclusion. He said by law, recantations are “inherently suspect.” To properly examine them, a court must look at the circumstances in which they took place, he said: What did the investigator say to the witness? What was the witness told prior to giving the statement?
There was “significant” information surrounding the circumstances of Stiles’ recantation that should have been elicited in court, Clark said.
Fuger “refused to do it,” Clark said. “I think that was inappropriate.”
Clark declined to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding the recantation. He said he doesn’t know if those circumstances alone would be enough to overturn Judge Fuger’s decision.
Clark said Stiles’ new testimony would likely not change a jury’s mind.
If the jury got a full examination of Stiles’ testimony in 1993 – 5 and in 2009, including the circumstances surrounding both, “I do not believe that the jury would come to a different conclusion,” he said.
“That would be a jury’s call, not mine,” he added.
DNA “Meaningless”
During the trial, Clark theorized that Gould and Taylor murdered Vega during a series of small street robberies to raise money to buy crack cocaine. The robbery-murder theory falls flat, Fuger found, because there was $100 sitting in an open safe, and $1,800 in Vega’s wallet, neither of which was taken. No cash was found on Gould or Taylor, and another supposition — that they stole expensive jewelry from the safe — was not corroborated, Fuger wrote. Police found no fingerprints from Gould or Taylor at the scene. They recovered no weapon.
Fuger also pointed to new DNA testing to show Gould and Taylor’s innocence. Since 1995, technology has emerged that enabled evidence to be re-tested using DNA analysis. In some cases, it has led prisoners to be freed.
The subject is the focus of Clark’s current job . He is spearheading an effort known informally as “Operation Innocence,” or more formally as the Connecticut Post-Conviction DNA Project. Last October, the state won a $1.5 million federal grant to conduct a systematic analysis of post-conviction cases to see if there’s any evidence that might benefit from DNA testing.
Some critics have raised concerns about his role on that project, because he opposed giving Gould and Taylor a new trial after new evidence emerged.
In the post-conviction investigation of Gould and Taylor’s case, an electrical cord that was used to bind the victim’s hands was tested for DNA. There was human DNA on the cord. DNA analysis eliminated Gould, Taylor and the victim as the source.
In their habeas suit, Gould and Taylor claimed “actual innocence” — meaning it was their burden to demonstrate that they didn’t do the crime. Claims of actual innocence are rarely granted because the odds are stacked against the petitioner. Judge Fuger found that the new DNA analysis — in addition to there being no other forensic evidence linking the defendants to the crime — served to exonerate them.
Clark dismissed that argument.
“The DNA in that case is absolutely meaningless,” he said. “It doesn’t tell you anything.”
Clark said the cord was “floating around” in an open plastic bag in the courtroom during his trial. The DNA could have come from anywhere, he said, even from a juror’s hand.
Moving On
As he discussed the case, Clark stressed that he has no current role in the proceedings and is not speaking on behalf of the state prosecutors currently handling the case. (A spokesman for the Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney O’Hare’s office has declined comment on this case.)
Soon, Clark will be even further removed.
After 28 years as a state prosecutor, Clark is retiring from the state on June 1. He landed a new job at the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia. There, he’ll be teaching advanced law classes for army lawyers, he said.
In the interview last week, Clark declined to say whether he believes Gould and Taylor are guilty.
“What I’m thinking matters even less now,” he said. “I’ll be retired before they even decide whether there will be a new trial.”