PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "When it reversed the convictions, the state Supreme Court said no evidence ever existed of any blood on the towel. In addition, the court said Lee had no way of knowing what the stain was because it hadn’t been tested before the convictions. Decades later, testing during the appeal process showed the stains weren’t made by blood, but some inorganic substance.
Lee has stood by his findings."
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STORY: "Wrongful conviction in bloody CT murder brings new multi-million dollar verdict," by Reporter Edmund H. Mahony, published by The Hartford Courant, on March 20, 2025.
A federal jury has ordered the town of New Milford to pay another $5.7 million as part of a settlement to two men who served 30 years in prison for a grisly 1985 murder a variety of courts later said they did not commit.
The District Court jury sitting in Bridgeport returned the verdict for Ralph “Ricky” Birch on Wednesday, finding that a New Milford police detective failed to intervene when a state police detective coached a jailhouse informant to falsely implicate him.
Birch and Shawn Henning, teenage friends in 1985, were wrongly convicted of stabbing and slashing to death Everett Carr, a retired truck driver who lived with his daughter in New Milford. The verdict Wednesday ends a succession of post conviction suits through which the two men have collected $43.3 million in damages in settlements or verdicts since the state Supreme Court reversed the murder convictions in 2019.
Courts that have reviewed the case since have said their rights were violated in a number of ways during the initial investigation by the state and New Milford police detectives. But most of the attention during the appeals and settlements has focused on allegedly false testimony about blood evidence by Henry Lee, the nationally known scientist who ran the state forensic lab at the time of the crime.
Carr’s murder was an exceptionally bloody crime and blood evidence dominated the separate Henning and Birch trials. Carr had been stabbed 27 times. His jugular vein was slashed and the hallway in which his killers trapped him was so saturated with blood that detectives had to build a makeshift ramp to get to the body.
Henning and Birch were teenaged drug abusers supporting themselves by burglaries and living in a stolen car packed with all their possessions. Police decided that the murder was the result of what they called “a burglary gone bad” and early in the investigation, a police informant directed detectives to Henning and Birch.
Both men argued in their defenses that they couldn’t have killed Carr because not a trace of blood was found on them or any of the cluttered junk in the stolen car.
Lee’s trial testimony was the prosecution’s rebuttal. At the time of Carr’s death, Lee was building a national reputation as a forensic scientist and could be counted on to be present with state police major crime investigators at high profile crime scenes.
Lee testified at both trials that he found a stained towel in an upstairs bathroom and that his repeated tests on what appeared to be light stains proved they were made by blood. The prosecution used Lee’s testimony to argue to the juries that the then 17-year-old Henning and 18-year-old Birch could have used the towel to clean themselves of blood.
When it reversed the convictions, the state Supreme Court said no evidence ever existed of any blood on the towel. In addition, the court said Lee had no way of knowing what the stain was because it hadn’t been tested before the convictions. Decades later, testing during the appeal process showed the stains weren’t made by blood, but some inorganic substance.
Lee has stood by his findings.
Lee has previously said in a written statement that said: “I have no motive nor reason to fabricate evidence. My chemical testing of the towel played no direct role in implicating Mr. Birch and Mr. Henning or anyone else as suspects in this crime. Further, my scientific testimony at their trial included exculpatory evidence, such as a negative finding of blood on their clothing that served to exonerate them.”
The state settled with the two men for $25.2 million. New Milford previously settled with Henning for $2.5 million. Birch refused New Milford’s settlement offer and went to trial.
Henning and Birch were convicted in Litchfield County and sent as teens to the state’s then notorious maximum security prison in Somers on 50- and 55-year sentences, respectively. Henning was stabbed in the chest and critically wounded early in his incarceration."
The entire story can be read at:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQZTprHLRxsftpZNJFJhVBsvwXt
https://authory.com/HaroldLevy
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
