PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Morant got through his 21 years in prison through his faith, (Defence Attorney HL) Brustin told the jury. “And now, Mr. Morant puts his faith in you.”
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STORY: "In closing arguments, City defends NHPD, Morant asks for $90M, by Reporter Mona Mahadevan, published by The New Haven Independent, on May 27, 2026.
GIST: "The City of New Haven’s attorney argued in federal court that the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) never sanctioned any misconduct that may have taken place during a 1990 murder investigation.
A lawyer representing Stefon Morant, meanwhile, asked a jury to award his client $90 million as compensation for the decades he spent in prison after Det. Vincent Raucci allegedly framed him and Scott Lewis for a double homicide they have long claimed they did not commit.
Those arguments were made by Thomas Gerarde and Nick Brustin, respectively, during closing arguments Tuesday in Morant’s wrongful-conviction trial.
“You should not award damages as to the City of New Haven” in this case, “where detectives knew the rules, they were fully trained, and no supervisor ever suggested that [misconduct] would be condoned,” said Gerarde.
“We live with whatever you say,” Gerarde told the jury. If they find the city liable, he asked them to assess $750k in damages. Do not use “anger” or “sympathy” to make a decision, he said. “Be cool, calm, and collected.”
The city’s attorney said “that you are not allowed to be angry. In fact, there’s nothing in the charge that says you shouldn’t be angry. You should be angry. You should be absolutely furious,” Brustin fired back.
Four weeks ago, when the trial first began, Gerarde claimed that Morant’s case was not one “of wrongful conviction.” He said “nothing improper happened” when Raucci collected witness statements about the 1990 murders of former alderman Ricardo Turner and his partner, Lamont Fields.
In closing arguments on Tuesday, however, Gerarde changed strategy. He elided any mention of Morant’s innocence or guilt, and he declined to say anything about whether NHPD detectives engaged in misconduct during the Turner-Fields investigation.
Instead, Gerarde argued that the city should not be held liable for the alleged witness coercion, evidence fabrication, and other misconduct that sent Morant to prison for two decades.
Gerarde centered his argument on testimony from former city police officers Vincent Raucci, Michael Sweeney, Robert Lawlor, and Vaughn Maher.
“I took very great pains to try and get you information based on open-ended questions,” Gerarde told the jury. In response to those questions, every police witness testified that no supervisor had ever told them, “in words or in substance,” that they were allowed to withhold favorable evidence, feed information to witnesses, or otherwise violate people’s constitutional rights.
If the jury heard answers to the contrary, it was only due to the barrage of aggressive, leading questions from the plaintiff’s attorneys, argued Gerarde. They failed to “give [the police witnesses] a chance to calmly hear and reflect” before answering their questions.
“Look,” he said. It’s “not a fair fight. These police officers who have been off the job for 35 years” are “no match for the kind of peppering they got.”
Brustin, Morant’s attorney, called that argument “rich.”
“We were cross-examining long-time detectives with their lawyers present,” while they stand accused of “coercing and feeding information to vulnerable [teenagers] in a small room in 1991,” he said.
Unlike the plaintiffs, the defense never pressed the police witnesses “to explain” anything, argued Brustin. The defendants failed “to put on a case.”
Over the last few weeks, Morant and his attorneys have worked to build a case against the City of New Haven and six former detectives in U.S. District Judge Sarala Nagala’s Hartford courtroom.
On Wednesday, the jury will begin deliberating on whether any of the parties are liable for Morant’s wrongful conviction. They will also decide what, if anything, Morant is owed in compensatory damages.
When Scott Lewis, Morant’s alleged co-conspirator, brought a wrongful-conviction suit against the city a decade ago, he and the Harp administration reached a $9.5 million settlement in 2017. By that point, Lewis had spent 18 years behind bars. A federal judge overturned his conviction in 2013.
Morant, meanwhile, was incarcerated for 21 years before being released on a sentence reduction in 2015. He eventually received an absolute pardon and a $5.84 million wrongful-conviction award from the state.
Morant and Lewis have long claimed that Raucci framed them for the double-homicide because of a drug-dealing debt. In this ongoing trial in Hartford, Morant and his attorneys have also argued that under then-Police Chief Nicholas Pastore, the culture of the NHPD enabled witness coercion, evidence fabrication, and other police misconduct.
The city should be held responsible for those institutional problems, argued the plaintiffs.
Theory #1: The City “Ratified” Misconduct
In closing arguments on Tuesday, Brustin offered three theories for the city’s liability under federal law. Under one theory, the city “ratified” the misconduct that led to Morant’s conviction. This argument requires the plaintiffs to prove that Pastore — who died in September 2024 — knew about the detectives’ alleged misconduct in the Turner-Fields investigation and failed to intervene.
In the 1990s, Brustin said Raucci’s “widespread criminal conduct” was well known — including by Pastore, who admitted in his January 2024 deposition that he had suspected Raucci of dealing drugs. Brustin argued that Pastore helped to hide Raucci’s misconduct by tipping him off about the FBI’s investigation into his alleged drug dealing. (Raucci has denied using and dealing cocaine. In 2023, he was allegedly caught with crystal meth and fentanyl.)
Brustin said Pastore may have been motivated to keep Raucci’s misconduct “under wraps” due to his own prostitution-related scandal. Pastore denied tipping off Raucci during his deposition.
Rather than litigating those issues during Morant’s civil-rights trial, Gerarde argued that the plaintiffs failed to prove a narrower claim: that Pastore had been involved with the Turner-Fields investigation and that he had condoned the alleged misconduct leading to Morant’s conviction.
“There’s no proof” that Pastore learned about issues in the investigation and told the detectives “to keep going, despite the flaws,” said Gerarde.
“Chief is busy. There’s no question,” he added. The jury cannot assume that Pastore supervised every investigation when the detective division received 4,000 new cases in 1990 alone.
On the topic of the FBI investigation, Gerarde said Pastore had been “reasonable” when he discouraged the agency from conducting a sting operation. The NHPD had already been looking into Raucci’s alleged illicit activities, Gerarde said, and they would have continued had Raucci not retired.
Theory #2: “Deliberate” Failure Of Supervision
The plaintiffs’ second liability argument posits that the city should be held responsible for “deliberately fail[ing] to provide adequate discipline and supervision” of police officers. To prevail on this argument, the plaintiffs must prove that the absence of “discipline and supervision” led the detectives to engage in the misconduct that put Morant behind bars.
The NHPD had a “code of silence,” argued Brustin. Former Det. Joseph Pettola testified that cops who reported misconduct were labeled as rats. Sweeney said his decision to contact Morant’s attorneys about exculpatory evidence was not considered acceptable by the NHPD.
Brustin said the so-called “code of silence” is substantiated by the number of cases involving similar constitutional violations during the 1990s. He cited wrongful-conviction claims involving Daryl Valentine, Troy Streater, Anthony Golino, Adam Carmon, Eric Hamm, George Gould, and Ronald Taylor.
“Each of the defendants told you they were never questioned by the NHPD about any misconduct,” said Brustin. “There cannot be a clearer example of deliberate indifference.”
Gerarde questioned Brustin’s timeline. For an absence of supervision and discipline to have caused Morant’s original 1994 murder conviction, the plaintiffs must demonstrate that the NHPD showed “deliberate indifference” to misconduct before the Turner-Fields investigation. However, argued Gerarde, most of the cases referenced by the plaintiffs were decided after January 1991, when most of the alleged misconduct took place.
“The only people that allegedly committed the misconduct…all testified they never saw the chief, even once, condone the misconduct,” said Gerarde. That fact alone, he argued, disproves all of the plaintiffs’ claims against the city.
Theory #3: NHPD Had A Widespread Custom Of Omitting Evidence
The plaintiffs’ third argument indicates that the city is responsible for the NHPD’s widespread practice of withholding exculpatory evidence.
“You heard clear, unambiguous admissions” that officers routinely omitted evidence favorable to suspects, said Brustin. Earlier in the trial, Sweeney and Pettola both testified that officers were not expected to include exculpatory or impeachment evidence in arrest affidavits.
Five separate witnesses in Morant’s case now claim to have been coerced into false testimony, noted Brustin. Issues with their statements — such as the 30 missing moments from the audio tapes and a teenage witness revising his story multiple times — were “never documented or disclosed.” Brustin asked, “What could be better evidence of a systemic problem?”
Outside of Morant’s case, there were other “very public examples” of the NHPD failing to disclose favorable evidence at the time. In Golino v. City of New Haven, filed in 1988, an officer testified that it was general practice to omit exculpatory evidence from arrest affidavits. In February 1991, Eric Hamm was wrongfully arrested for a murder; the case prompted then-prosecutor David Gold to write an internal memo about the NHPD omitting exculpatory evidence from case files.
The city “took no action” after either case, said Brustin.
Gerarde responded that in the Golino case, the court ended up dismissing all claims related to municipal liability. Because of that ruling, there was nothing in the case to prompt Pastore to revise the department’s policies and practices.
Gerarde also denied that the issue of omitting exculpatory evidence could be considered widespread. The cases cited by the plaintiffs involve a maximum of nine people, he pointed out.
Former officers “have testified consistently” in this case “that there was no time that they saw the chief condone officer misconduct,” repeated Gerarde. “That’s called not proving the case.”
$90 Million Vs. $756,000
Brustin opened the conversation about damages on Tuesday by asking, “What is the value of the loss of time and freedom of each day of wrongful incarceration?”
Morant spent 22 hours per day locked in a cage that was the size of a small bathroom. He lived in “a world of steel” under the “constant threat of violence,” he said. “What is a fair and just value of that? What about for 21 years of waking up day after day to the fear that you might die in prison for something you didn’t do?”
No amount of money can take away Morant’s trauma, Brustin told the jury. The legal system asks the jury nonetheless to find a “fair and just” estimate of his damages.
“Is two million for each of the 21 years enough?” asked Brustin. “How about three million for each year?” Even after his release, Morant continues to suffer from the emotional and physical trauma of his incarceration. To compensate for those years, Brustin suggested annual payments of $500,000 or $750,000.
The city is “hoping they can walk away from this trial with a slap on the wrist. The cost of doing business. We are asking you to do the exact opposite,” said Brustin.
Gerarde rebuffed that argument. This city is not asking for a “wrist slap,” he said. He accused the plaintiffs of anchoring the jury around such large sums to increase the odds of a significant payout.
Instead of beginning with millions, Gerarde asked the jury to start from $0.
“What if someone were to say $100 per day for all the days he was incarcerated?” The sum would be $756,000, said Gerarde. Someone else could suggest $250 per day, he said. That would yield a total payment of $1.9 million.
In Brustin’s rebuttal, he emphasized that the city’s lawyer is no longer saying that Morant committed the 1990 double-homicide.
“All of a sudden,” the defense has stopped accusing Morant of murdering Turner and Fields. “Not even they could stand up and say that” after everything that took place in the courtroom, said Brustin.
Morant got through his 21 years in prison through his faith, Brustin told the jury. “And now, Mr. Morant puts his faith in you.""
The entire story can be read at:
in-closing-arguments-city-defends-nhpd-morant-asks-for-90mPUBLISHER'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;
