A Friday state Supreme Court decision will send Ron Taylor and George Gould back to court to fight for their freedom yet again after a dramatic exoneration. It’s unclear yet whether they may also have to go back to prison in the meantime.
The two men walked free last year after Superior Court Judge Stanley Fuger overturned their murder convictions in response to a habeas petition. They had served 16 years of 80-year-sentences for the murder of Fair Haven bodega owner.
Friday, the state Supreme Court Friday overturned Fuger’s decision. The high court sent the matter back to the habeas court for a retrial.
Click the play arrow above for footage from the release of Gould and Taylor last year.
Read the Supreme Court decision here. Read the concurrence here.
In its decision the justices upheld the state’s view that prisoners released based on new evidence are not innocent until proven guilty, the way they were at their original trials. They become guilty until proven innocent — they have to prove not only that the state convicted them based on bad evidence, but also that they in fact did not commit the crime.
“That’s a huge difference in burden of proof between a prosecutor proving their case beyond a reasonable doubt … versus proving innocence,” noted criminal defense attorney Hugh Keefe said in an interview. “How many people can prove their innocence without ironclad witness testimony?”
In an interview with WTNH, Taylor’s attorney, Peter Tsimibidaros, called the ruling “cruel … because Ron Taylor is innocent, and he has Stage 4 colon cancer.” Taylor was diagnosed while in prison and had surgery in prison to remove part of his colon and his entire spleen, and then underwent chemotherapy. (Read about that here.) Tsimiibidaros also argued that plenty of evidence of Taylor’s innocence was presented at trial.
Taylor and Gould were convicted in 1995 of killing a Fair Haven bodega owner in 1993. Years later, a star witness for the state recanted her story, thanks in part to private investigator Gerry O’Donnell, who re-researched the case. Taylor and Gould filed a habeas corpus claim of actual innocence before Judge Fuger. In his ruling in March, 2010, Fuger declared the men were innocent and had suffered “manifest injustice.”
The state Supreme Court saw it differently. Friday’s high court ruling was the result of an appeal by the prosecution, following the overturning of the murder conviction.
Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Michael O’Hare, the prosecutor on the case, said Friday that his office will be filing a motion next week on the question of whether Gould and Taylor should be taken back into custody pending their new trial. He said the state’s attorney’s office has not yet reached a decision on whether to ask the judge to order them back to jail.
Given that the Supreme Court’s decision voided the overturning of the conviction, Taylor and Gould “are individuals who are therefore subject to a valid conviction and sentence for the crime of murder,” O’Hare said. What that means for their custody status is another question, he said.
Joseph Visone, Gould’s attorney, said he expects the state to file a motion to take Taylor and Gould back into custody. He said he plans to file an opposing motion. He said Taylor’s cancer has metastasized throughout his body. “If the state of Connecticut wants to take someone like that and stick him back into prison, shame on the state of Connecticut.”
Opinions
The justices reached consensus on the decision to overturn the habeas court ruling. In his opinion for the whole, Justice Dennis Eveleigh wrote that the Gould-Taylor case required the court to “elaborate on the meaning of ‘actual innocence’” as laid out in a 1997 high court decision, Miller v. Commissioner of Correction.
One paragraph later, Eveleigh affirms the court’s guilty-until-proven-innocent view of cases like Gould and Taylor’s: “We conclude that the trial court improperly failed to recognize that, under the Miller test, actual innocence requires affirmative evidence that the petitioners did not commit the crimes of which they were convicted, not simply the discrediting of evidence on which the conviction rested.”
“In sum, the recantations by Stiles and Boyd may demonstrate that there no longer is any credible evidence that the petitioners did commit the crimes of which they were convicted,” the opinion later states. “What the habeas court’s decision lacks is any discussion of affirmative evidence that would prove by clear and convincing evidence that the petitioners did not commit the crimes.”
The opinion notes the fact that Taylor, who was 51 at the time of his release last year, is battling cancer. “Therefore, we direct the habeas court to conduct a new trial on this matter as expeditiously as possible,” Eveleigh wrote.
The task of Gould and Taylor’s lawyers in the new trial will be to prove the “actual innocence” of their clients, through “affirmative proof,” which the opinion defines as “that which might tend to establish that the petitioner could not have committed the crime even though it is unknown who committed the crime, that a third party committed the crime or that no crime actually occurred.”
As the presence of a murder victim would seem to eliminate the possibility of proving that no crime occurred, Gould and Taylor will have to either establish that they could not have committed the crime or that someone else did.
Although Gould and Taylor’s lawyers sought to implicate another man as the killer during the habeas trial, Judge Fuger found their argument only partially persuasive, Eveleigh’s opinion notes.
Attorney Visone, Gould’s lawyer said that while he accepts the justices’ legal reasoning, “we did present affirmative evidence of [Gould and Taylor’s] innocence.” That evidence was a 45-minute audiotape of testimony from a prostitute who was in the freezer of the store when the murder victim’s son opened the door and shot his father, Visone said. “There was no question she was there, the state doesn’t dispute that.”
Unfortunately, Fuger did not cite the audiotape in his decision, Visone said. As a result, the Supreme Court was bound to make the decision it did, he said. The Supreme Court couldn’t consider the audiotape because Fuger didn’t.
Visone said he read the high court decision as one that is sympathetic to Taylor and Gould. He said the success of the re-trial will depend in part on what judge is selected to hear it.
Attorney Keefe called the decision unjust.
“This decision creates an “actual innocence” standard of proof that is virtually impossible to meet in most cases,” attorney Keefe said of the Supreme Court decision. “It will require DNA evidence, a credible confession of the crime by someone else, ironclad alibi evidence or the like.”
Keefe noted Eveleigh’s statement that “it may seem unjust to allow a conviction to stand when the evidence on which the conviction rested has been discredited.”
“It does seem unjust because it is,” Keefe said.
“In his concurring opinion, Justice Richard Palmer held out a ray of hope – that a strong, credible denial of involvement by the defendants, combined with the recantations of the original 2 witnesses, might be enough to rise to the “actual innocence” standard,” Keefe said. “But the rest of the Supreme Court do not seem so inclined so I have my doubts if that would do it.”
“I hope they [Taylor and Gould] make the most of their time out of prison because it looks like it won’t last.”
Previous coverage of this case:
• Chief Justice: Prove You Didn’t Do It
• Exonerated Prisoner Fights For His Life
• Exonerated Prisoners Walk Free
• State Won’t Block Prisoners’ Release
• Judge Orders Prisoners Freed
• Prosecutor Sticks To Guns
• Judge Delays Release In Wrongful Conviction Case
• Outraged Judge Reverses Murder Convictions