"A
Connecticut man who spent eight years in prison for setting a fire in a
Carmel restaurant has been exonerated after Putnam prosecutors agreed
there wasn't enough proof he had done anything wrong or that the fire
had even been deliberately set. A federal judge on Monday
threw out the arson conviction of 44-year-old William Haughey. A Putnam
County jury in 2008 had found Haughey guilty of setting the March 10,
2007 fire at Smalley’s Inn. Haughey was initially freed
on bail May 9 after Putnam District Attorney Robert Tendy told a
magistrate judge that his office was supportive of Haughey's bid for
freedom. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Vincent Bricetti vacated the
conviction and sentence and ordered Haughey's unconditional release,
finding he was actually innocent......Tendy
said he initially got involved while running for district attorney last
year when Haughey wrote to him. He became convinced of Haughey's
innocence and said he would review the case if elected. "I
don't think it was anything egregious, I think it was just a series of
... unfortunate events that wound up with Mr. Haughey convicted," Tendy
said. Haughey’s state appellate efforts — centering on
insufficient evidence and ineffectiveness of counsel — had all failed.
He filed a federal motion to overturn the conviction in 2013. He also reached out to the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice. "It
was a breath of fresh air how (Tendy) responded, really being an
administer of justice as a District Attorney should be," said Deskovic,
who formed the foundation after his own exoneration. He was freed in
2006 after serving nearly 16 years in prison for the rape and murder of a
Peekskill High School classmate when new DNA testing identified the
real killer. The new probe into the Smalley Inn fire
determined that the findings of the original fire investigator, Robert
Geoghegan, were "fundamentally flawed." Geoghegan testified at the trial
that the fire was "incendiary in origin" and not caused by an
electrical problem. But according to Tendy's office,
Geoghegan could not adequately rule out unintentional causes because he
limited his investigation to the area around the bathroom. He also never
inspected the area around an electrical smoke-eater, even though
witnesses had observed smoke and flames in a vent that went to the
smoke-eater..........The
original defense lawyer, Edward McCormack, was also faulted for not
hiring his own fire investigator to counter Geoghegan's contentions."
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/2016/05/24/2008-putnam-arson-conviction-tossed/84860494/
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