Thursday, January 24, 2008

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Private investigator Gerald O'Donnell has uncovered new evidence that could exonerate two men doing time for a 1993 New Haven murder. His work's so persuasive, the state has reopened the case.

By Freda Moon

Eugenio DeLeon Vega was found at 5:42 on a Sunday morning, Fourth of July, 1993. His body was slumped against cases of Budweiser in his bodega's walk-in refrigerator. His wrists were tied with three loops of white extension cord. His hands, positioned over his chest, looked to be in prayer. Vega's white t-shirt was splashed with blood from the small caliber bullet that had entered his head from the left and exited right, killing him at age 51.

As news of the killing spread through Fair Haven, a thousand people are said to have come to the scene. Vega—a large, tough, imperfect man—had run his cluttered shop on Grand Avenue for 25 years and was mourned by his community as a dignitary. His wake lasted four days.

There was no murder weapon found, no DNA tested. But there was an eyewitness, Doreen Stiles, a prostitute and addict, who was working down the street early that morning. Three weeks after the murder, Stiles was netted by police in a prostitution sting. After hours of interrogation and "drug sick" from heroin withdrawal, she became the prosecution's only witness. She'd been there, she told police. She'd seen two black men run from Vega's bodega at 330 Grand Ave.

The police had already zeroed in on the two men Stiles claimed to have seen. They showed her photographs of their suspects and she confirmed their suspicions: Yes, she said, those are the guys. Stiles' interrogator—among those said to be "instrumental" in making the arrest, according to then-Chief of Police Melvin H. Wearing—was Sgt. Brian Sullivan, who in 2001 was indicted for concealing evidence in a 1996 murder investigation. Sullivan was ultimately acquitted, but the case embarrassed the department by exposing its misdeeds.

In February 1995, Ronald Taylor and George Gould were convicted of murder, robbery and conspiracy in Vega's death, though no physical evidence linked them to the crime. Each was given 80 years in prison, a life sentence in Connecticut. Both are incarcerated at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in Suffield. Now, 13 years later, Stiles has recanted; DNA evidence on the cord that tied Vega's wrists has been found not to belong to Taylor and Gould; and New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington has reopened the case.

The families of Taylor and Gould say that none of this would have happened if it weren't for the "brilliant mind" of a private investigator named Gerald O'Donnell. O'Donnell, a retired Cheshire police officer and former inspector with Dearington's office, is a workaholic with an obsessive attention to detail. He worked at the State's Attorney's office during the Vega murder investigation but, near retirement, was on the periphery of the case, he says.

O'Donnell was hired by Taylor's defense attorney to look into the case and for three years has compiled news accounts, scoured records and tracked down witnesses never interviewed by the police. O'Donnell became convinced that Taylor and Gould had not committed the crime and compiled a 400-page binder of evidence that, he believes, will free them. In early November, O'Donnell handed the binder over to Dearington's office.

For over a month, neither O'Donnell nor the families heard anything from the prosecutor's office. But in mid-December they got word from their attorneys that Dearington had re-opened the case. The men had been pursuing habeus corpus petitions, challenging the legality of their convictions, but Dearington's office asked for a continuance in their habeus hearings while it explored O'Donnell's claims.

In a brief interview, Dearington confirmed the case has been reopened. "Whenever we receive information that calls into question whether someone else might be responsible, we take it seriously," he said. He's assigned an inspector to investigate, he says. But Dearington's being cautious. "We're giving it serious consideration," he said, "but that doesn't mean we agree with the claim...it remains to be seen whether we think these two people are not responsible."

The Star Witness Recants

Both Taylor and Gould have denied their guilt since their arrests. O'Donnell says they were never at Vega's shop and were doing drugs with several other people at a nearby house when he was killed.

They've challenged their convictions through a series of losing appeals and—having exhausted those efforts—have challenged their convictions through habeas corpus, arguing that their defense was inadequate and their constitutional right to due process violated. But both families recognize that without O'Donnell's investigation, they were fighting a losing battle. Dearington seems to agree. "I get letters everyday from people who claim they're innocent," he says.

So, what made him reopen this case?

"Obviously, it's a well organized report."

Back in 1993, amid the community's cries for justice, the police and prosecutors may have been less circumspect. In a taped interview with O'Donnell, Stiles says that police interrogators, "kept asking me questions, kept asking me questions—asking if I saw anything. I kept saying no." She was getting drug sick, she says, and after six or seven hours of interviews, told them what she believed they wanted to hear: that she'd seen Taylor and Gould leave La Casa Green at the time of the murder.

Later, she testified that she'd heard arguing in English and Spanish as she had approached the store and hidden in an alley. According to a New Haven Register article from the time of the trial, Stiles testified that she heard "what sounded like two black men shout orders to open a safe, then desperate screaming in Spanish that sounded like Vega." Then she heard a gunshot and watched as Taylor and Gould ran from the shop, looking in her direction as they crossed Grand Avenue. Now Stiles says that none of that happened—not only did she not see Gould and Taylor, she wasn't even there that morning.

The safe in Vega's shop was open when police arrived at La Casa Green. According to police, Vega's daughter believed he was storing a large amount of cash (initially she said $5,000, according to a Register story from the time, but during the trial it was said to be about $30,000). Based on his investigation, O'Donnell says there's reason to dispute what was in the safe and why it was opened.

Last week, O'Donnell sat in the Advocate's conference room, playing the tape of Stiles recanting her testimony. Three years of his life are spread out before him: black and white photocopies of crime photos (Vega's body laid flat in the medical examiner's office, the wooden strip in La Casa Green where the extension cords hung, the shop's open safe, with papers scattered on the floor) and a large, black plastic binder with manila dividers marking the statements of each of his witnesses.

O'Donnell is 62, a small man with a quiet, anxious temperament. He clenches his nose and closes his eyes as Stiles talks to him from the old, black cassette tape recorder. He looks to be near tears. His recorded voice asks the one-time witness why she lied. "Just to shut them up," she says of the policemen. "I was using drugs," says Stiles, who is now two and half years sober. "Sometimes, when you're using drugs and you're having withdrawals, you'll do anything." After O'Donnell taped this interview on Dec. 6, 2006, he went to his car, sat in the parking lot and cried. "She was just so pathetic," he says.

Convinced of Taylor and Gould's innocence, their defense attorneys pushed for DNA testing on the cord that was used to tie Vega's wrists. O'Donnell knew from the forensic reports that the cord had been preserved for evidence, but he found nothing to show that it had ever been tested. In March 2007, the state's forensic lab found that there was DNA on the cord, but it did not belong to Taylor or Gould. It also did not belong to Vega himself, or another man that was at one time a suspect in the case.

Dearington says he doesn't remember whether DNA was tested in the case—or if not, why not—but says testing was less common in 1993 than it is now.

There's more to the Taylor-Gould investigation than O'Donnell will allow on the record. He worries for the safety of witnesses, he says, and doesn't want to do anything that will compromise the case's outcome. If Taylor and Gould didn't kill Vega, someone else did. O'Donnell believes he knows who, but he won't say.

It's in the prosecutor's hands now, he says.

"Many of us believed those guys were innocent."

Almost immediately after Vega's murder, police looked to Taylor and Gould. The two men were new friends. Before the week of the murder, they had never met. Gould had been released from jail just a few days before (he'd violated parole in a previous robbery conviction). After his release, he was staying with the wife of his cellmate across the street from La Casa Green. Taylor lived with his girlfriend and her daughter in Fair Haven Heights. He had no criminal record. The morning Vega was killed, Gould and Taylor had been on a cocaine roll—"partying" for a day and a half or more. After their money ran out, they robbed three people in strong-armed street thefts for small amounts of cash (they got about $30 total, according to O'Donnell). They were obvious suspects.

O'Donnell estimates that he's investigated over 500 cases since he retired from the State's Attorney's office in 1996. As a private investigator, he's hired by defense attorneys to find evidence in a client's case. But in the process, he says, he often finds information to confirm their guilt. When he does, the information goes to both the attorneys and the authorities. "I don't hide anything," he says. Before he takes a new case, he warns his clients that his findings may hurt their defense. That did not happen in the Taylor-Gould case. This time he's "100 percent positive" the convicted men are innocent.

He's not alone. "There were many of us that believed those guys were innocent," says Chief Public Defender Thomas Ullman. He says the case, with its single witness and no physical evidence, never stood up. "It's easy to rely on snitches and junkies and confidential informants and it's really a risky business," says Ullman. "It's an easy way out of doing real investigations." Ullman won't name names, but says, "There's notorious cops in this city that have been using that tact for years." Even so, says Ullman, it's "really rare" that a prosecutor would voluntarily reopen a case. Ullman's spent his entire career in the public defender's office, but can only remember one other instance.

Even early in his investigation, O'Donnell had serious doubts about the conviction. From his time as a police officer, he knew eyewitness accounts are sometimes unreliable. Studies have shown that when witnesses to the same event are asked to recount what they saw, stories can vary widely. In the Taylor-Gould case, there was just one person, Doreen Stiles, who claimed to have identified the killers—and, O'Donnell reasoned, Stiles was a heroin addict who made her claim only after being picked up by police on prostitution charges. (Police dropped Stiles' charges after she helped them with the Vega case.)

Even James Clark, who prosecuted the case and still works with the State's Attorney's office, acknowledged in his closing argument that the case relied on Stiles' testimony. "This case rises and falls with Doreen Stiles," Clark told the jurors during the trial. "If you believe her, you'll convict. If you think she's lying, you'll acquit." The Register described her as the "star witness." During the trial the police put her up at a fancy downtown hotel. Chris DeMarco, Taylor's defense attorney at the time, pleaded with them to remember reasonable doubt. "If Doreen Stiles is all the state needs to convict someone of murder, then God help us all," he said.

But Clark sold the jury on his theory that Taylor and Gould ran out of drug money and killed Vega in an attempt to get more. "These guys simply ran out of drugs," he said. "They were binging, on a jag; they came out to get more money and stopped at the first convenient place: La Casa Green."

But investigating the case years later, O'Donnell saw inconsistencies between Clark's theory and the evidence. It didn't make sense, he says, that Taylor and Gould, who'd been involved in small-time, weaponless robberies around the neighborhood, somehow came up with a gun and shot someone—especially since Vega hadn't seemed to fight back. O'Donnell noticed that crime scene photos showed a remarkably undisturbed shop, with cans and boxes of Goya products in neat rows along the shelves and money in the register. The coroner's report showed "no other injury is noted on the body surface" save for a "barely recognizable contusion" on the forehead. Where his wrists were bound, there was "only a faint contusion and slight impression." None of this is what one would expect from a 234-pound man who friends told O'Donnell would never have gone down without a fight.

Maybe, O'Donnell thought, Vega was caught off-guard and shot before he could resist, his hands tied after the fact? But why would Taylor and Gould—whose only apparent motive was money—shoot Vega if he didn't resist? Why would they tie the extension cord around a gold watch on Vega's wrist, leaving it behind, along with the gold cross around his neck? Why leave over $1,800 in his pocket and $100 in the cash register?

O'Donnell's unanswered questions mounted, he says, until a Fourth of July Sunday in 2006, exactly 13 years after the murder, when he went to Fair Haven early in the morning to walk the path Doreen Stiles claimed to have taken on the morning of the murder. He was trying to reconstruct the timeline of events: from 5:08, when Vega's security company recorded that he'd opened the shop, to 5:42, when a customer made a 911 call to police to report Vega "missing" (she hadn't checked the back of the store), to 6:05 a.m., when the police arrived to find Vega's body, still warm.

Stiles testified that she'd been working at Ferry and Grand streets when she headed to Vega's shop at 5:30. When asked how she was sure what time it was, she said there was a bank on the corner (now Sovereign Bank) with a large clock that she remembered seeing before she left. But when O'Donnell walked the neighborhood, he said he became convinced that if Stiles had left Ferry and Grand at 5:30, she couldn't have been at Vega's store when the shooting happened. He walked the route six times over the course of an hour. It was then, he says, he became convinced that Stiles was lying.

Taylor and Gould have always maintained their innocence. In comments to their trial judge, Ronald J. Fracasse, Gould denied he was a murderer. "In all my history, in all my time, I never put anyone in the hospital. There was never a time when the person couldn't walk tomorrow."