PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "State records show Morant is one of seven people charged with murder by the New Haven police in the 1990s who were later released and sued the state over wrongful convictions. Connecticut has paid the seven men nearly $41 million in settlements, including $5.8 million to Morant, according to the records. There are two wrongful conviction claims still pending before the Office of the Claims Commissioner, which could lead to even more payouts But as the jury in Morant’s case gets ready to deliberate, possibly Tuesday, the stakes are high. If the jury sides with Morant and awards him another major monetary settlement, the city will be facing several similar lawsuits — two of which are already scheduled for trials later this year in federal court. Because the cases would be decided by juries rather than through the more formula-driven process used by the Claims Commission, the city could face payouts significantly higher than those paid by the state. A verdict in the city’s favor, meanwhile, could discourage similar lawsuits from being filed in the future."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The trial that has unfolded over the past month in the U.S. District Court Judge Sarala Nagala’s courtroom has included a detective pleading the Fifth Amendment, tear-filled testimony from Morant and his family about the impact of his incarceration, an allegation of drug dealing by one detective, and the unusual act of the judge calling New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker to court to warn him against publicly discussing the case."
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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: Lewis is also the only one of the seven men compensated by the state to have received a settlement from the city, which paid him $9.5 million in 2017 to settle his federal lawsuit. The discrepancy still bothers Morant. “Why are we here? What are we doing here?” Morant testified. “They know I am innocent and they are still trying to protect a corrupt cop. Why? Enough is enough.” Morant broke down several times while detailing what prison life was like and its impact on his family. He started his testimony on his 58th birthday."
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STORY: "Trial revives long standing allegations of corruption against New Haven Police detectives, by Reporter Dave Altimari, published by The Connecticut Examiner, on May 26, 2026. "Dave Altimari joined CT Examiner in 2026 after spending 23 years with the Hartford Courant and more than four years with CT Mirror. Dave Altimari was awarded a Pulitzer Prize (2026) with Ginny Monk, Sophie Chou and Haru Coryne."
GIST: A respected prosecutor warned in early 1991 that New Haven detectives had coerced witnesses, concealed exculpatory evidence and helped turn a murder investigation into such a “debacle” that the case would have to be dropped.
“Matters need to be addressed so that we can hopefully minimize the chances that this type of debacle will reoccur,” then-Assistant State’s Attorney David Gold wrote in a memo to State’s Attorney Michael Dearington.
What happened to that memo is unclear.
But as the civil trial of Stefon Morant has unfolded in the U.S. District Court in Hartford over the past month, testimony by five former police detectives has made it clear the practices outlined by Gold never stopped.
Morant is suing the city of New Haven and four former police detectives — Vincent Raucci, Vaughan Maher, Michael Sweeney and Robert Lawlor individually — alleging that the detectives routinely used the tactics Gold criticized in his 1991 memo to arrest the wrong suspects and that the police department, headed by Chief Nicholas Pastore, not only condoned but encouraged them. Pastore also was sued, but died in 2024. His estate is still listed as a defendant.
Morant claims Raucci coerced him to make a statement implicating himself and another man, Scott Lewis, in the October 1990 murders of city alderman Ricardo Turner and his partner Lamont Fields.
He also alleges that Raucci threatened two key witnesses with million-dollar bonds and possible murder charges unless they changed their statements to identify Lewis and Morant as the culprits. Both later recanted.
Morant served more than 21 years in prison for the murders before being released after Dearington acknowledged in open court that the investigation against him was tainted. Morant was eventually pardoned.
State records show Morant is one of seven people charged with murder by the New Haven police in the 1990s who were later released and sued the state over wrongful convictions. Connecticut has paid the seven men nearly $41 million in settlements, including $5.8 million to Morant, according to the records.
There are two wrongful conviction claims still pending before the Office of the Claims Commissioner, which could lead to even more payouts.
But as the jury in Morant’s case gets ready to deliberate, possibly Tuesday, the stakes are high.
If the jury sides with Morant and awards him another major monetary settlement, the city will be facing several similar lawsuits — two of which are already scheduled for trials later this year in federal court.
Because the cases would be decided by juries rather than through the more formula-driven process used by the Claims Commission, the city could face payouts significantly higher than those paid by the state. A verdict in the city’s favor, meanwhile, could discourage similar lawsuits from being filed in the future.
The trial that has unfolded over the past month in the U.S. District Court Judge Sarala Nagala’s courtroom has included a detective pleading the Fifth Amendment, tear-filled testimony from Morant and his family about the impact of his incarceration, an allegation of drug dealing by one detective, and the unusual act of the judge calling New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker to court to warn him against publicly discussing the case.
‘It’s all lies’
The case has unfolded with a complex cast of attorneys and defendants.
Morant is represented by the well-known New York City law firm Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann & Freudenberger, with as many as six attorneys rotating through the courtroom some days. Meanwhile, four attorneys are representing the defendants — one for each of the three detectives, and Thomas R. Gerarde for the city of New Haven.
At the center of the dispute is the issue of liability. The city claims Morant cannot prove the city is liable for any possible wrongdoing in his case, arguing that any “negligent acts” or “willful misconduct” individual detectives may have committed were outside the scope of their employment.
Attorneys for the detectives, meanwhile, assert qualified immunity, arguing they cannot be held personally liable for actions taken in the course of their official police duties.
Morant’s attorneys are relying on the so-called Monell claim — named after a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision which determined local government agencies can be sued directly if an employee’s unconstitutional actions were the result of an official policy or failure to properly train staff.
The various legal strategies have led to some unusual courtroom dynamics, including former colleagues sitting next to each other while their attorneys attempted to undermine their credibility.
Raucci spent the most time on the stand, and his testimony over two days became heated several times, particularly on direct examination by Nicholas Brustin.
A defiant Raucci categorically denied doing anything wrong and said everyone who claimed he coerced witnesses or doctored taped statements was lying. At one point, Brustin listed more than 10 people — including other officers and an FBI expert who testified taped statements of key witnesses had been doctored, and Raucci responded they were all wrong.
“It’s all lies,” Raucci insisted several times.
Raucci has been deposed or testified close to 10 times, yet he chose his testimony at this trial to unveil some new theories.
One of the allegations against Raucci is that he deliberately failed to pursue leads involving another potential suspect and instead focused the investigation on Lewis because Lewis allegedly owed money to drug trafficker Frank Parese, whom Raucci was accused of being friendly with.
Raucci denied knowing or helping Parese, and recounted on the stand how he once tried to surveil Parese’s house using the nearby home of someone in the New Haven corporate counsel’s office.
“She was letting us use her house to do surveillance of Parese’s house, we were there for a little while and then they (headquarters) called us off the surveillance,” Raucci testified.
“When did the story about the surveillance come to you?” Brustin asked. “What we are seeing in front of us right now is telling us more lies. You just made up a brand new story and suddenly recalled this surveillance that has never been mentioned in 35 years.”
A major issue in the police investigation into the Turner/Fields murders is that Maher, the previous detective on the investigation, had found one witness who implicated another man — Michael Cardwell — as the possible shooter.
But when Raucci took over the case, he never interviewed Cardwell until he was ready to charge Lewis and Morant with the murder. Raucci testified that prosecutors asked him to tie up that loose end.
Raucci conducted an 11-minute taped interview with Cardwell, who said he was at a local hotel alone at the time of the murders.
When Brustin pushed Raucci on why he completed such a short interview with a potential double murderer for the first time in the history of the case, Raucci said he checked out the alibi months later by going to the hotel and interviewing the night clerk who corroborated the statement.
Raucci acknowledged he didn’t tape that statement or file a report about it.
“So for the first time in history you’re saying there was an undocumented interview with a hotel clerk who remembered a night six months earlier that Cardwell was there the entire night?” Brustin asked.
“Because the last thing you wanted to do is prove that Cardwell didn’t have an alibi. Is that correct?” To which Raucci answered: “Not correct.”
Brustin also asked Raucci about when he was interviewed by the FBI, which was conducting a drug investigation against him.
When Lewis was convicted and sent to prison, he contacted the FBI and told them Raucci was a dirty cop who had set him up because Raucci was friendly with Parese.
Testimony showed that the FBI investigation progressed to the point where they were planning a sting to catch Raucci selling cocaine, but called it off because someone tipped Raucci off. Pastore was made aware of the FBI investigation and its findings, but Raucci was never disciplined and later retired as a decorated officer with a full pension.
Raucci was interviewed by the FBI and testified he blamed Gold. He admitted he told FBI agents “to the extent anything went wrong in this case it was Gold’s fault and he had aspirations to be the NH state’s attorney.”
Raucci said he agreed to wear a wire against Gold, who is now a judge in criminal court and was once the chief court administrator, but the FBI declined his offer.
Meanwhile, Gold had written a glowingly complimentary letter to Pastore about Raucci’s work in the Lewis/Morant cases, saying it was “extraordinarily helpful.”
Raucci maintained a “keen interest in the case,” Gold wrote.
But when Gold testified earlier in the trial, Brustin asked if Gold now presumed Raucci’s “keen interest” in the case was pure.
He answered “not anymore.”
Facebook threat
As Raucci testified, he had two attorneys present — James Tallberg representing him at the civil trial and Gregory Cerritelli, who was appointed by Nagala after Raucci’s ex-wife Donna Desai revealed a threatening Facebook message she had received from someone she believed to be Raucci.
Desai testified her ex-husband was a heavy cocaine user and often threatened her.
Just days before the trial started, she said Raucci’s 35-year-old son received a Facebook message that said: “TELL YOUR MOTHER IF SHE TALKS ABOUT THE NARCOTICS THE HOUSE WILL BE TAKEN. GOOD LUCK.”
The message came from someone named “V Incent Raucci.”
Nagala said she considered the message a threat to a witness in a federal case and that she would decide whether to refer Raucci to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for criminal charges. To protect his rights, she appointed Cerritelli to be in court when he testified.
Brustin asked Raucci nine questions about the Facebook message, and Raucci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to all but one question.
Among the questions Raucci declined to answer was Brustin’s assertion that “this message threatening her to give truthful testimony is exactly the conduct we are accusing you of in this case isn’t it?”
As Raucci started testifying, Morant, who sat between his lawyers at the plaintiff’s table, began to cry, covering his face before abruptly getting up and leaving the courtroom.
‘Victory is Mine’
Unlike his friend Lewis, Morant was not initially exonerated. He accepted a sentence modification which allowed him to leave prison after more than 21 years but with a murder conviction still to his name.
It was several more years before he received a pardon from the Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles, fully clearing his record.
Lewis is also the only one of the seven men compensated by the state to have received a settlement from the city, which paid him $9.5 million in 2017 to settle his federal lawsuit.
The discrepancy still bothers Morant.
“Why are we here? What are we doing here?” Morant testified. “They know I am innocent and they are still trying to protect a corrupt cop. Why? Enough is enough.”
Morant broke down several times while detailing what prison life was like and its impact on his family. He started his testimony on his 58th birthday.
He easily recited his inmate number, 129982, when asked by his attorney. In prison, he said, you are a number not a name.
Morant said he would receive three or four visits a year with his children — his oldest daughter Twyla was 6 when he went to prison and his younger twin boys Christian and Julien were 2 years old.
He worked menial jobs at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution. His favorite, he said, was working in the gym, never earning more than $1 an hour. For 5 or 6 years, he volunteered to do hospice work for about 20 hours a week helping dying inmates.
At the Cheshire Correctional Center, Morant repaired wheelchairs and sent most of the money he earned to his children. He used any money family members gave him for Christmas and birthday gifts for his children as well.
He volunteered to work with the prison pastor and joined the prison choir, eventually becoming its director. His favorite song, he told the jury, was “Victory is Mine.”
Morant at times drew laughter from jurors as he bragged about his sons’ athletic exploits and recounted that his reaction to receiving a pardon was to shout “Jesus” — a reaction he repeated while testifying on the stand.
When is it going to end?
As for the murders of Turner and Fields, Morant testified he wasn’t in Connecticut when they happened. He was in Fayetteville, North Carolina, visiting family and trying to raise money to bond his brother out of prison.
Morant acknowledged he never told Raucci or Maher he had an alibi for the night of the murders, but they also never asked.
On Jan. 15, 1991, Raucci picked Morant up at his mother’s house and drove him to the station. When Morant asked why, he said Raucci only said one word: “Murder.”
Morant was taken to an interrogation room in the detective bureau where he remained for the next six to eight hours.
Versions of what happened next have evolved through habeas hearings, court depositions and trials over the last 35 years. Morant has always claimed Raucci threatened him if he didn’t implicate Lewis.
“He kept saying I’d get the electric chair and a million dollar bond,” Morant testified.
Morant eventually gave a four-hour taped statement saying he went to Turner’s apartment with Lewis and waited outside in the car while Lewis went inside. Morant said Raucci stopped the tape several times and rewound it, erasing what Morant said and then telling him what to say instead.
Both Raucci and Maher, who was present for the taping, deny Raucci ever rewound the tape, and if it was stopped at all, it was so the detectives could walk outside and discuss strategy. There is no discussion of stopping the tape on the recording, and Maher testified that was because they had a series of hand signals they used to communicate with each other.
When the interview was over, Morant refused to sign the statement. He never did.
He was allowed to leave, but he came back the next day with his mother because he wanted to recant the statement. Morant testified that day he was asked once again to sign his statement, but they left. No one took a report that he wanted to recant the confession.
“They asked me to sign the statement but I wouldn’t because it wasn’t true,” Morant said.
Under cross-examination, Morant acknowledged he had been convicted in state Superior Court, even though key witnesses recanted their statements and family members testified about his North Carolina alibi.
Morant testified that the jury chose to believe “the lies the police officers told rather than his family.”
Several family members testified after Morant, including his mother Linda Morant. She had cashed in her retirement accounts and all her savings to pay her son’s legal bills.
“When they took Stefon to prison, they took me to prison too,” she testified. “I have not been the same since.”
The 77-year-old has spent nearly half her life fighting for her son’s innocence.
“I know he is home but he still doesn’t have any peace,” Linda Morant testified. “When is it going to end? I’m 77 years old, am I even going to be alive to see this end?”
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