PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "At 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Thomas Gerarde, the attorney representing the city in Morant’s civil-rights trial, promised Nagala that Elicker would make no further public statements about the settlement discussions. The mayor is scheduled to speak in court at 4:15 p.m. (Judge) Nagala has ordered the 10-person jury to leave the room before Elicker enters. At City Hall on Wednesday, Elicker declined to comment further on the matter, stressing that he wants to be “sensitive” to the ongoing trial while also “trying to be transparent.” He confirmed that he was accurately quoted in Rosenberg’s article. Beyond that, “I don’t want to make any comments.”
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STORY: "Judge Orders Mayor To Court Over Settlement Comment, by Reporters MONA MAHADEVAN, DEREEN SHIRNEKHI and THOMAS BREEN, published earlier today.
GIST: "Mayor Justin Elicker on Wednesday afternoon will head to federal court in Hartford to answer a judge’s questions a
“I work really hard to be transparent and answer questions from the press,” Elicker told reporters after an unrelated press conference at City Hall on Wednesday. He said he is going to follow the judge’s order and and head to court to hear any concerns she might have.
“I haven’t talked with the judge. I want to make sure I don’t make comments before hearing about the concerns from the judge,” he added.
The quote in question was first published Wednesday morning in an article written by Hearst’s Nathaniel Rosenberg. According to that article, Elicker said that Stefon Morant — who is suing the city and a group of former detectives for allegedly framing him for a 1990 double murder — had demanded a payment that was “well beyond what is reasonable.”
Around 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, Morant’s legal team discovered Hearst’s article and asked Judge Sarala Nagala to call Elicker into court. Nick Brustin, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys, described Elicker’s characterization of the settlement talks as a “lie.”
Hearst’s Rosenberg then posted another article with more quotes from the same conversation with Elicker. He is quoted as saying that Morant’s demands were “so far beyond what any other case has settled for” and that the city has been “forced into a position where we can’t settle.”
At 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Thomas Gerarde, the attorney representing the city in Morant’s civil-rights trial, promised Nagala that Elicker would make no further public statements about the settlement discussions.
The mayor is scheduled to speak in court at 4:15 p.m. Nagala has ordered the 10-person jury to leave the room before Elicker enters.
At City Hall on Wednesday, Elicker declined to comment further on the matter, stressing that he wants to be “sensitive” to the ongoing trial while also “trying to be transparent.”
He confirmed that he was accurately quoted in Rosenberg’s article. Beyond that, “I don’t want to make any comments.”
When the Independent asked Elicker last week why the city had settled with Morant’s alleged co-conspirator, Scott Lewis, in 2017, and not with Morant, the mayor responded, “Oftentimes, both parties want to reach a settlement agreement, but sometimes different parties have very different expectations as to what’s an appropriate settlement agreement.” At the time, he declined to share any further details about the settlement.""
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/2026/05/13/judge-orders-mayor-to-court-over-settlement-comment/
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;
