PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The ongoing trial concerns a lawsuit filed by Morant against six former city police detectives, including Raucci, as well as the City of New Haven. Morant spent 21 years incarcerated after he and Scott Lewis were convicted of murdering former alder Ricardo Turner and his partner Lamont Fields in their Hill apartment in 1990. Morant and Lewis have long maintained that they were framed by Raucci because of an unresolved drug-dealing debt. Morant spent 21 years behind bars before receiving a sentence reduction and pardon. He eventually won a $5.84 million wrongful-conviction award from the state. Lewis’s conviction was overturned in 2013; he received a $9.5 million payment from the city in 2017."
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STORY: "Raucci Denies Everything," by Reporter Mona Mahadevan, published by The New Haven Independent on May 8, 2026.
GIST: "Former city police Det. Vincent Raucci took the witness stand in a wrongful-conviction trial Friday morning and declared that everyone who testified against him is a liar.
“As many as a dozen people — including high-ranking members of the New Haven Police Department, detectives, brother officers, numerous witnesses, [and] people you’ve dealt with in the neighborhood — all said terrible things about you that were all lies, yes?” asked Nick Brustin, an attorney representing the case’s plaintiff, Stefon Morant.
“False accusations, yes,” replied Raucci.
Within a few minutes of Raucci taking the stand in U.S. Judge Sarala Nagala’s federal courtroom in Hartford, Morant began to sob. He raced out of the room with two of the plaintiffs’ attorneys — unable to continue listening to the man he has accused of framing him for murder.
The ongoing trial concerns a lawsuit filed by Morant against six former city police detectives, including Raucci, as well as the City of New Haven.
Morant spent 21 years incarcerated after he and Scott Lewis were convicted of murdering former alder Ricardo Turner and his partner Lamont Fields in their Hill apartment in 1990. Morant and Lewis have long maintained that they were framed by Raucci because of an unresolved drug-dealing debt.
Morant spent 21 years behind bars before receiving a sentence reduction and pardon. He eventually won a $5.84 million wrongful-conviction award from the state. Lewis’s conviction was overturned in 2013; he received a $9.5 million payment from the city in 2017.
Raucci began his testimony at around 8:30 a.m. on Friday and is expected to testify for the next few days of court. Raucci’s testimony for the day ended at around 3:30 p.m.
What About Cardwell?
The questioning on Friday was heated, particularly when Brustin pressed Raucci to explain why he failed to pursue a man named Michael Cardwell as a suspect in the double homicide.
According to Brustin, in the winter of 1990, Det. Vaughn Maher compiled “three inches of meticulous documentation” that pointed to Cardwell as the likely culprit of the Turner-Fields muders.
In January 1991, Raucci replaced Maher on the case.
Through January and February, there was no documented investigation into Cardwell, said Brustin.
In March 1991, police records show that Raucci interviewed Cardwell for 11 minutes.
“Could you explain to the jury why you spent 11 minutes with Michael Cardwell, he gave you an alibi that wasn’t even an alibi, [and] you asked no follow up questions about it? Can you explain that to the jury?” asked Brustin.
“I went to the hotel” and spoke to the clerk, who said Cardwell was there during the night of the murder, replied Raucci. “He was no longer a suspect in the homicide.”
Brustin pressed Raucci to explain why there was no record of him interviewing the clerk.
“I was told by my supervisor that I was putting too much information in my reports.” The audience scoffed in disbelief.
Brustin pointed out that Raucci had not mentioned interviewing the clerk once over the last 35 years. “You just remembered that for the first time today,” asked Brustin, incredulously.
“I remembered that, yes,” he replied.
Through the questioning, Raucci cycled through other reasons why he did not investigate Cardwell. He did not have access to the homicide files, he said. Maher never added his reports about Cardwell to the file, he said. The state’s attorney’s office told him not to investigate Cardwell, he said.
“What I remember was Vaughn Maher talking to the state’s attorney and making the decision over whether to bring Cardwell in or out of the investigation,” said Raucci.
“Is that the story you want to stick with?” asked Brustin.
“Which one would you choose?” asked Raucci. The audience laughed.
Raucci Pleads 5th On Facebook Threat
Raucci’s testimony on Friday comes more than a week after the civil-rights trial began.
Last week, Raucci’s ex-wife, Donna Desai, testified that her then-husband was a regular user of cocaine when he worked as a police detective. Desai said she suspects Raucci was a drug dealer, too.
On Friday, Raucci denied those accusations, stating that he has never used cocaine or any other drug “ever.”
Meanwhile, Ovil Ruiz, a key witness whose original interview with Raucci helped secure Morant’s and Lewis’s convictions, fought back tears as he testified on Wednesday about Raucci coercing him into providing false information to implicate men who did not commit the murders. Ruiz also told the court that he used to do drugs and get high with Raucci.
Michael Sweeney, who worked as a detective alongside Raucci on this case, testified last week that he saw Raucci coerce false testimony from Ruiz.
On the other hand, Maher, another former detective and fellow defendant, said that he never saw Raucci do anything wrong during the investigation. David Gold, a current state judge and former state prosecutor, has also testified to say he saw no evidence of police misconduct at the time.
Two days before the ongoing trial started, Raucci’s ex-wife, Desai, said she received a threatening message that she interpreted as meaning that Raucci would burn her house down if she testified in court about his alleged drug use.
According to a screenshot presented in court on Friday, someone by the name “V Incent Raucci” sent a Facebook message to the pair’s 35-year-old son at 11:57 p.m. on Sunday, April 26. The message read: “TELL YOUR MOTHER IF SHE TALKS ABOUT NARCOTICS THE HOUSE WILL BE TAKEN AWAY… GOOD LUCK…”
“Do you deny sending this message?” Brustin asked Raucci on Friday.
Raucci invoked the Fifth Amendment, which protects against self-incrimination. Judge Nagala instructed the jury that Raucci has the constitutional right to invoke the Fifth Amendment. “You may, but are not required to, from Mr. Raucci’s refusal to answer the question, [decide] that the answer may have been adverse to him,” she told the ten-person jury.
“[Desai] testified that this message was consistent with the Vinny Raucci that she knew at the time of the case,” Brustin said on Friday about the Facebook threat. “Do you agree with that characterization?”
“No,” replied Raucci.
“Would you like to answer more questions about this topic, Mr. Raucci?” asked Brustin.
“No, I would not,” replied Raucci.
“And you would agree that this message, threatening Ms. Desai with giving truthful testimony, is exactly the conduct we’re accusing you of engaging in” with the witnesses in the Morant case, pressed Brustin.
Raucci again pleaded the Fifth.
“You Absolutely Never Did Cocaine?”
Brustin then pressed Raucci to explain an allegation fellow defendant and former Det. Joseph Pettola made on Thursday. In the 1980s, said Pettola, Raucci attempted to plant a bag of cocaine during a traffic stop. In Pettola’s telling, Pettola and a now-deceased former colleague, Melvin Daniels, stopped Raucci and got rid of the cocaine.
“From that day forward, you considered Mr. Raucci a dirty cop, fair to say?” asked Brustin on Thursday.
“Yes,” replied Pettola.
On Friday, Brustin played a video of Raucci from a deposition in 2023, when he said that the bag of cocaine was actually a pouch of rosin. On the tape, Raucci said, “That’s all [Pettola and Daniels] saw in my hand—a rosin bag.” He only pulled out the bag, he said, “‘cause my hands were sweaty. I just pulled a guy out of the car.”
While testifying on Friday, Raucci admitted that it is easy to distinguish between a rosin pouch and cocaine bag. (A rosin pouch is something that softball pitchers use to dry their hands).
Brustin then challenged Raucci to explain why Pettola would concoct such a story.
Is it because “he was jealous of your batting average from softball?” asked Brustin. The question was referencing a theory that Raucci had raised during deposition.
“Could be, yes,” replied Raucci.
“You absolutely never did cocaine, not on the job, not off the job, not once?” asked Brustin.
“No,” replied Raucci.
Multiple witnesses have testified that Raucci used and dealt cocaine. His ex-wife, Donna Desai, said she saw Raucci use cocaine and suspects he was also dealing. Her son also received a coercive Facebook message, which she interpreted as Raucci threatening to burn down her house if she talked about his cocaine use.
Ovil Ruiz, too, claimed that he used cocaine with Raucci.
Cocaine use is a central element to the case: according to the plaintiff, Raucci framed Lewis and Morant because of a drug-dealing debt.
On Friday, Brustin pushed to establish a relationship between Raucci and the known drug kingpin Frank Parise. He showed a picture of Raucci’s notebook, which has Parise written on the front page.
Brustin asked Raucci why he wrote Parise in his notebook.
“We were doing surveillance” from the house of someone in corporation counsel, he said. “She allowed us to use her house for surveillance,” since it was a “stone’s throw” away.
“Now, we have a brand-new version of events that I’ve never heard before!” exclaimed Brustin. Raucci has never before said surveillance was the reason why he wrote Parise in his notebook.
“What we’re seeing in front of our eyes is you making up a story,” said Brustin.
Raucci disagreed. “I didn’t recall it at the time you asked me the questions.""
The entire story can be read at:
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. 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.
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;
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
