Fair Haven Arsonist Seeks Sentence Reduction

As tears rolled down his face, a Fair Haven developer pleaded with a judge to reduce his 25-year prison sentence after considering his poor health, loving family, model behavior behind bars, and professed innocence of the two arson convictions that have left him incarcerated for the past half-decade.

Angelo Reyes made that plea Friday afternoon during a sentence modification hearing before state Superior Court Judge Gerald Harmon. The virtual hearing took place online via a live video stream.

Joined by defense attorney Alex Taubes, his wife Irma, several of his adult children, and longtime friends and fellow Grand Avenue business boosters Frank Alvarado and Paul Wessel, Reyes asked Harmon to reduce by whatever amount of time the judge sees fit the 25-year prison sentence — suspended after 15 years behind bars, to be followed by 10 years of probation — that he is currently serving at Cheshire Correctional Institution.

A different state judge, Jon Blue, handed down that sentence back in 2015 after a jury found Reyes guilty of two counts of second-degree arson, among other charges, stemming from his hiring of a father-son duo to torch a house on Downing Street in October 2008 and a BMW in May 2009. (Reyes has denied the state’s allegations, and has argued that he was framed.)

After exhausting his various appeals, Reyes turned himself in and began serving his prison sentence for these arson charges in 2017. (Click here, here, and here, and see below, to read more about his case.) 

“What assurance can I give the court that I won’t reoffend?” Reyes said on Friday, even as he continued to protest his innocence. ​“The answer is: 100 percent. Throughout this entire ordeal, I’ve held onto the most important thing that defines a man and his character, the thing that forces you to stand with pride. And that, your honor, is my integrity.”

Taubes argued there are multiple factors in this case — including Reyes’ tenuous health, his participation in rehabilitative programs like a Yale playwriting course, his strong network of professional and personal support in Fair Haven, and, he claimed, new evidence that bears out Reyes’s innocence of the arson charges — that provide ​“good cause to reduce the incarceration time that is necessary for this defendant to serve.”

“We need him home,” Reyes’s wife, Irma, said through tears of her own. ​“We need our husband, our faither, and our community-involved leader.” And to Reyes, she said, ​“Thank you for being who you are, and I’m sorry that you’re going through this.”

Assistant State’s Attorney Lisa D’Angelo urged the judge to reject the sentence modification request.

She read from Judge Blue’s 2015 sentencing decision, in which he stated that Reyes, though he may have ​“good attributes,” also clearly has ​“a very dark side to [his] character,” as evidenced by his ​“repetitive history of criminal activity.” (Reyes’s criminal history includes convictions for violating absentee ballot laws, carrying a dangerous weapon in a motor vehicle, threatening, and larcenies. During Friday’s hearing, Reyes pointed out that many of those convictions took place decades ago.)

“Mr. Reyes has served less than one third of that sentence” originally imposed by Judge Blue for these arson convictions, D’Angelo said. It is ​“the state’s position that there is no good cause to modify Mr. Reyes’s sentence.”

Harmon promised to take into account ​“everyone who’s spoken today and the information they’ve provided,” as well as the memo and documents submitted in advance by Taubes, before issuing a written decision in this matter within the next month.

Click here to read Reyes’ and Taubes’s sentence modification memo in full.

"An Extraordinary Person"

People who spoke up in support of Reyes Friday pointed to a host of different arguments.

First, Taubes argued that there is ​“significant newly discovered evidence” that ​“greatly undermines the evidence that was brought to the jury in this case” back in 2015. Included amongst that purported new evidence, Taubes said, is information about a police raid of 95 Downing St. that took place over a year before the alleged Reyes-ordered arson and that yielded a cache of now-missing drugs and guns. 

Throughout the hearing, D’Angelo objected to Taubes’s attempts to get the judge to consider new evidence or Reyes’s claims of innocence when deciding on whether or not to grant the sentence modification request. No actual evidence has been presented, she said, no witnesses have been called, and there are other courts that can handle such lines of inquiry.

Most of those who spoke up Friday focused less on Reyes’s professed innocence, and more on the positive impacts he has on members of his family and of the Fair Haven community more broadly through his work as a developer, philanthropist, and owner of two laundromats.

Paul Wessel said he has known Reyes for 22 years, dating back to Wessel’s time as the city’s deputy economic development administrator.

He said he worked closely with Reyes in Reyes’ role as a Fair Haven landlord and civically engaged neighborhood resident.

“Angelo is just an extraordinary person to work with,” Wessel said. He ​“truly cared about Grand Avenue, would step up [to] host holiday parties for children at his laundromat, and has been a pleasure for me to work with.” Wessel said he still speaks with Reyes ​“almost every two weeks while he’s in prison,” and that Reyes still asks about the ​“goings on in Grand Avenue.”

“I just think, if there’s a way for him to be available to the New Haven community, we would all benefit from it,” Wessel said.

Alvarado agreed.

He said he has known Reyes for over 20 years, and that he went to college with Reyes’s wife, Irma. Through his past work as the director of the Spanish American Merchant Association (SAMA), Alvarado said, he worked closely with Reyes — not least because Reyes owned the building where SAMA was based.

“I also worked with him in the capacity of just being in the neighborhood,” Alvarado said. ​“I helped him with his Halloween trick-or-treat [parties] at the laundromat, Christmas parties. I’ve watched his son grow up on Grand Avenue and turn into the person that he is today.”

“I support the motion that Mr. Reyes should be back on Grand Avenue doing the things that we need done on Grand Avenue,” he concluded.

In one of the more emotional testimonies offered Friday, Irma spoke of how ​“very much community involved” her husband of 23 years has been. She spoke about how much of his childrens’ lives — high school graduations, college graduations, engagements, weddings — he has missed because he’s been locked up. She pleaded with the court to reduce his sentence and return him to his home and to Fair Haven, where he grew up. 

Taubes’s sentence modification memo includes a letter of support for Reyes written by State Rep. Juan Candelaria on Aug. 10, 2021. ​“Angelo has been a blessing to Fair Haven,” Candelaria wrote in that letter. He ​“has single-handedly addressed much of the blight in the neighborhood, by purchasing properties that have been dilapidated and neglected by absent landlords. These efforts have transformed the neighborhood and have created a positive outlook for its residents.”

“Connecticut is a second chance state,” he concluded, ​“and I truly believe that Angelo deserves a second chance to be with his family.”

During his own chance to address the court, Reyes stressed that there is still plenty of good left for him to do at home and in the neighborhood. (Click on the video above to watch Reyes address the court in 2015 when he was first found guilty of these arson charges.)

“I’ve had a very loving, intact relationship with my family” despite his incarceration, he said. ​“We have suffered together.”

He said that the work he did in Fair Haven prior to his incarceration improved ​“the quality of life for children, families, neighbors, as well as merchants along the commercial corridor.”

“I’ve been genuine and, if given the opportunity, I will continue to contribute to society in a law-abiding manor.”

Taubes and Reyes emphasized how he has no disciplinary reports since he first went to prison on these arson charges in 2019.

He also joined a theater class sponsored by Yale University, where he wrote a play based on Dante’s Inferno. ​“My play was about the pain of not saying goodbye,” Reyes said.

They also said that Reyes’s health has suffered — and will continue to be put at risk if he remains in prison.

He contracted Covid while behind bars, Taubes and Reyes said. He has multiple pre-existing medical conditions that have gotten worse over the past five years. 

“I haven’t seen a dentist in years,” Reyes said. ​“I haven’t been able to follow up on my original medical issues. After I contracted Covid, I lost my sense of taste and smell. It still hasn’t come back. And I’ve developed an irregular heartbeat.”

Lastly, they said that Reyes has been punished enough for the crimes he was convicted of, and which he still claims he is innocent of.

“I’ve lost millions,” Reyes said. ​“I’ve been publicly humiliated, stripped of all my opportunities. At 56, I’m starting over.”

“If this motion is granted, Mr. Reyes will still suffer from the collateral consequences of this felony conviction,” Taubes said. He will still be under supervision on probation. 

"A Risk To The Community"

The only people to speak out against Reyes’s sentence modification request on Friday were the state prosecutor and one of his victims, Madeline Vargas.

Vargas owned the BMW that Reyes allegedly ordered the father-son duo of Osvaldo Segui Sr. and Jr. to light on fire on Quinnipiac Avenue in 2009. 

A state court victim advocate read a letter written by Vargas, in which she urged the court to turn down the sentence modification request.

She said that her six-year-old grandson was asleep in a bedroom right next to the driveway where the car was lit on fire. There were two people living in the second floor of that adjacent building. 

She said she was diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety after the fire, and that she still has ​“flashbacks to what happened that night.”

“I feel strongly that he should have to serve his entire sentence,” Vargas concluded. ​“He poses a risk to the community, and I hope this motion is denied.”

The victim’s advocate said she was not able to reach Robert Lopez, the owner of the Downing Street house that was torched, to see if he would like to provide a statement for Friday’s hearing.

D’Angelo, meanwhile, focused her opposition to the sentence modification request by stressing just how serious the charges were that Reyes was convicted of back in 2015. 

The Downing Street fire saw 30 to 40 firefighters respond to the scene, she said. There were ​“street signs that were melting at the time. It was a very dangerous situation.” She also noted how, true to Vargas’s statement, the car that was lit on fire stood approximately 10 feet away from a residential house.

“Mr. Reyes has served less than five years,” she concluded, ​“less than one third of the sentence imposed by Judge Blue.” He should therefore not be let out early, she said, and the sentence modification request should be denied.