Chris Peak pre-pandemic file photo
Nitza Cruz (left), mother of Luis Noel Cruz, who made a new pitch Thursday for early release.
“Cruel and unusual” didn’t work. So now a former Latin King returned to court with a “compassion” argument in his quest to escape a life sentence for murders committed at 18 years old.
Luis Noel Cruz made that new argument, virtually from a Florida federal penitentiary, to U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall of New Haven in a virtual hearing Thursday.
Cruz, now 45, killed two people when he was 18. He received a life sentence.
He previously convinced Judge Hall to scrap his life sentence on Constitutional grounds that sending a teenager to prison for life was “cruel and unusual.” But then federal appeals court disagreed and overruled her.
So Cruz has returned to ask Hall to rule a second time that he should be granted an early release so that he can care for his ailing mother during the pandemic.
Hall, sitting in New Haven, heard the argument during the two-hour court hearing Thursday morning in the case United States of America v. Luis Noel Cruz.
His voice quavering with emotion, Cruz said he remains “extremely sorry for my wrongdoings.”
Those included shooting and killing one witness, Tyler White, the son of a New Haven police detective, in a car in Bridgeport in 1994. That same night, Cruz held down a perceived snitch, Arosmo “Ra-Ra” Diaz, as a fellow gang member shot and killed him.
“Unfortunately, I cannot undo the past, and for that I remain eternally sorry,” Cruz said, the Florida prison’s intercom blaring behind his voice.
He spoke of how his father died from complications from Alzheimer’s on Wednesday. He spoke of how his mother is terminally ill and in need of a full-time caregiver. He said he hasn’t been able to see her in nearly a year because of her inability to visit his prison during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Unfortunately I can only make a difference in the present and the future. [I ask] that I be given an opportunity to make a difference and an impact where I can,” he told the judge.
White’s stepmother Nancy, in a written statement read on Thursday by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Stolfi Collins, urged Hall to keep Cruz in place in his cell.
She wrote that Cruz should “stop feeling sorry for himself” and “stop trying to subvert justice” through appeal after appeal to the court for a shorter sentence.
“Maybe he can show compassion by standing up and being a man,” she wrote, “and accepting that his brutal actions have sentenced all of us to this life of hell that he alone has created.”
Hall adjourned the hearing at close to 12:30 p.m., after lengthy questions and answers with both sets of attorneys and after hearing from Cruz and from White’s stepmother and sister (through written statements read by Collins). She promised to issue a ruling in the coming weeks.
Constitutional Grounds Overturned By Appeals Court
Contributed photo
Judge Hall.
This is the second time in two years that Hall has heard a petition by Cruz and his attorneys to let the former Latin King go free.
The first time around, she granted the petition.
In February 2019, Hall ruled that Cruz — who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1996 — should have his prison sentence dropped to 35 years.
She reasoned at the time that, because Cruz was just five months past his 18th birthday when he murdered White and Diaz, a mandatory life sentence violated the then-teenager’s Eighth Amendment protections against “cruel and unusual punishment.”
At that emotional pre-pandemic hearing, a prison social worker testified that Cruz has become a model rehabilitated inmate. Cruz spoke of how sorry he is for his crimes and how he wants to dedicate his life to helping troubled youth. White’s family members pleaded with the judge to keep their loved one’s killer behind bars.
Hall ultimately decided that the mandatory life sentence violated the then-18-year-old’s Constitutional rights.
She based her decision largely on the 2012 Supreme Court case Miller v. Alabama, in which a majority of the top court’s justices ruled that a 14-year-old who’d clubbed a man with a baseball bat then burned him alive inside his trailer could not be treated and sentenced like an adult, because his brain was still developing.
While reluctant to say exactly when adulthood begins in the eyes of the law, Hall decided in that February 2019 hearing that 18 year olds aren’t quite there yet. She ruled they should not be treated like fully grown, and responsible, adults.
In September 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that Hall was wrong: Not in her calculation that Cruz should serve 35 years instead of life. But in her exercising the authority to overturn a mandatory life sentence on Constitutional grounds at all for someone who was sentenced when he was 18.
The three-judge panel cited the 2019 case United States v. Sierra, in which the Second Circuit judges argued that the Supreme Court did draw a “bright line at age eighteen for Eighth Amendment limitations on sentencing.”
“Consequently, because the Supreme Court has ‘chosen to draw the constitutional line at the age of 18 for mandatory minimum life sentences,’” that appeals court decision reads, “the imposition of such sentences for defendants between ages of eighteen and twenty-two does not violate the Eighth Amendment.”
And with that stroke of a pen, Hall’s earlier February 2019 ruling on Constitutional grounds was reversed. The appeals court ordered Hall to reinstate Cruz’s mandatory life sentence.
Which is how the case ended up back on Hall’s docket on Thursday.
This time around, Cruz and his defense attorney, Ted Koch, turned not to the Constitution — but rather to the First Step Act from 2018—to try to win the rehabilitated inmate an earlier release.
Bid For Compassionate Release During Covid
Koch and Cruz filed two motions with Hall in a bid to win a reduced sentence under the First Step Act.
The first cited Section 404 of that sweeping criminal justice reform law.
That section applies reduced penalties for crack-cocaine offenses that were committed before 2010. One of the offenses Cruz was convicted of in 1995 was conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute “heroin, marihuana, cocaine and cocaine base.” So Cruz’s entire “sentence package” should be reexamined and, ultimately, reduced, Koch argued.
Hall and the government attorneys pushed back during the first hour of Thursday’s hearing. They argued that the drug charge Cruz was convicted of a quarter-century ago had little to do with the mandatory life sentence he received.
“What’s driving the sentencing, the reason that we’re still here today, has nothing to do with the drug conviction,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Pierpont argued. “It has more do with the two murder convictions related to the shooting deaths of White and Diaz.”
Koch’s second motion for a reduced sentence argued for a “compassionate release” under Section 603(b) of the First Step Act.
In that motion, the defense attorney argued that Cruz should be let out of prison early for a handful of reasons.
Those include the “extraordinary and compelling circumstances” of Cruz being incarcerated for over a year under confining conditions dictated by the Covid pandemic; Cruz’s intention to be the primary caregiver for his terminally-ill mother; the contention that the court back in 1996 misinterpreted federal statute when giving Cruz a mandatory life sentence for his crimes; the consideration that Cruz was only 18 when he committed the murders; and his status as an “extraordinarily rehabilitated” inmate.
Hall ordered Koch to submit a written brief in the next two weeks that detail Cruz’s mother’s medical condition, and what role Cruz might play if he were to become her full-time caregiver.
He would essentially “be like a live-in aide,” Koch said. “The rest of Noel’s family doesn’t live with her. They do the best they can. His release to her home would serve a dual purpose of him having a place to go that is safe and supportive, and her having a live-in son would take care of her.”
Koch pitched Hall on resentencing Cruz to a total of 30 years behind bars.
Hall was taken aback. Just two years ago, she said, “I determined a sentence of 35 years” after carefully considering all the facts in the case. That decision was reversed by the federal appeals court she said. “It wasn’t reversed on my analysis of what’s an appropriate sentence. It was reversed on my authority to change the sentence” on Constitutional grounds.
Why should Cruz only get 30 years now when she determined in 2019 that he should receive 35 years? she asked.
“If it were not for the pandemic,” Koch replied, “I would not have much to say about that.”
But Covid-19 has made Cruz’s life behind bars particularly difficult, Koch said. He lives in an open-dorm institution with 150 inmates per unit in cubicles that are eight by 10 feet, he said. Only three feet separate the top and bottom bunks.
“He has reported to me that people who file grievances are threatened with transfer or punitive segregation,” Koch said.
Before Covid, Cruz’s mother was able to visit him regularly, Koch added. Initially due to a temporary halt on all visitations, and now due to his mother’s concerns about her own health, he said, she can no longer visit her son.
On top of it all, Cruz’s father died on Wednesday. He had been in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. He had contracted Covid, and recovered, earlier in the pandemic.
“A punishment of watching one by one everyone pass, when you can’t give them succor when they’re suffering and you can’t be there after they pass, is an extraordinarily harsh sentence.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Collins responded that Cruz and his fellow inmates aren’t the only ones who have suffered from increased isolation and separation from elderly loved ones during the pandemic.
“I think we also have to acknowledge that we’re all living in unprecedented times,” she said. “Many people even living in the community are limited from seeing their parents who have underlying conditions. Frankly, if you’re going to work and your children are going to school, you may not be spending time with your sick relatives for fear of bringing them Covid.”
Cruz: “I’m So Sorry For All I Put You Through”
Before the two-hour-plus hearing ended, Hall called on Cruz and White’s family members to address the court if they wanted to.
“I hope that nothing I say will be construed as a comparison between what I and my family have been through, and the pain and heartache” he has caused to White’s and Diaz’s families, Cruz said.
“My actions are always in the forefront of my mind.”
He said that he has been “in some very dangerous places” during his nearly 27 years behind bars. “But I knew that, if I stood out of the way and minded my own business, I could survive. Not so with Covid.” One can’t practice social distancing in prison, he said.
“Covid has made me even more introspective about life and family after my dad contracted Covid in a nursing home.” He said his dad was placed on a ventilator, his dementia got worse, and, though he recovered from Covid, he ultimately died in hospice due to his Alzheimer’s before father and son had a chance to reconcile.
“While his passing was not unexpected, it remains painful, especially know that I was not there because of my own wrongdoings.”
He said that his mom will likely not recover from her current medical condition. “I pray for an opportunity to care for her, so I can ease some of the pain and sorrow I have caused her all these years.”
He ended by addressing the family members of his victims.
“Finally, to the White and Diaz families, I’m so sorry for all I put you through.”
The Whites: “He Deserves No Compassion”
Collins said that the White family members could not bear to sit through Thursday’s hearing because of how painful this all has been to relive.
She first read a statement from White’s stepmother, Nancy.
“The meaning of compassion is to recognize the suffering of others and then take action to help,” she read. She said that does not define Cruz.
“The unspeakable actions of Noel Cruz … are the diametrical opposite of one who shows even a modicum of compassion, a desire to help those who suffer, to alleviate that suffering and distress. Rather, he is the direct cause of such unmitigated suffering that words continue to fall short int he many attempts to explain the chaos, the heartache, and the utter anguish has inflicted upon our family.”
She said that Tyler’s mother is currently confined to a nursing home, and that his father, the retired former New Haven detective Billy White, “has been consumed by guilt and grief.”
Tyler’s daughter was only an infant when “Noel Cruz viciously murdered his father,” she said.
Collins also read a prepared statement by Tyler’s sister, Elizabeth White.
“I am here today speaking to you as a broken person,” she read. “As the daughter of a broken father and the member of a broken family. A family that Mr. Cruz broke when he committed murder.”
“We’ve described our pain. We’ve described our emptiness. We’ve described the decades of distress and angst,” she continued. “The problem here is that what you have done to our family is indescribable.”
She said that Cruz’s bid to bid to become a free man has “revictimized an entire family over and over.”
“Allow us to continue healing and allow us to move forward,” she pleaded. “Allow us to continue our lives without the constant victimization that Mr. Cruz has caused. This man has shown no compassion, and in turn he deserves no compassion.”
At 18 every human knows killing is wrong. I feel sorry for his mother, but this guy got the sentence he deserved.
Making exceptions for murderers should never be considered unless there is new evidence that proves innocence, which is not what we have here.