After Witness Recants, Prisoner Presses Case

In the wake of a newly released affidavit regarding a false witness statement, attorneys, family, and friends of a convicted man are calling for a case review.

In the affidavit, the sole witness to a 1996 shooting recanted his story. He said he initially offered his witness statement as part of a deal with police and prosecutors. That original statement put New Havener Gaylord Salters behind bars for 21 years for a nonfatal shooting in New Haven.

Now Salters’ lawyers are pushing for more information on what they say is evidence of a wrongful conviction.

That November 1996 shooting involved two members of a street gang called the Ghetto Boys. Those members, Kendall Turner and Daniel Kelly, were injured in a shoot-out with members of a rival gang called the Island Brothers. Based on Turner’s witness statement, Salters was convicted of first-degree assault and conspiracy to commit assault and sentenced to 29 years in prison.

In a signed 2018 affidavit, which was publicly released this week, Turner admitted to framing Salters in exchange for avoiding a mandatory prison sentence for felony gun possession.

“I gave police a false statement implicating Gaylord Salters in the shooting because the detective who I gave the statement to promised to help keep me out of jail for the illegal gun I was carrying,” Turner wrote.

Following Turner’s now-declared false statement, the state charged Salter with the weapons violation.

Months after that, on May 28, 1997, a judge granted Turner advanced rehabilitation on charges related to the same shoot-out. That decision kept Turner out of prison and erased his felony gun charge from his public record.

One of Salters’ attorneys, New Haven criminal-defense lawyer Alex Taubes, also said that four months after Salters was arrested, police caught another man in possession of the same gun the victims were shot with in the November 1996 shooting. The man, named Orien Thomas, lived on the corner of East and Humphrey Streets at the scene where Turner and Kelly were shot. ​“Yet the police made no effort to investigate whether this individual was responsible for the shooting- instead proceeding with the prosecution of Mr. Salters,” Taubes wrote in a statement on the case.

Thomas was not charged in the shooting, but only with illegal use of a firearm. He served a six-month sentence for possession of firearm charge.

The State’s Attorney’s habeus unit is currently reviewing the case as part of ongoing litigation.

In a press conference outside the New Haven Police Department Wednesday morning, Taubes publicly called on the department to release more information about Turner’s case. He has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request.

Taubes is looking to access case files for Turner’s weapons charge as well as any other documents pertaining to the case.

Police spokesperson Officer Scott Shumway said the department has handed over all records requested by Salters’ attorneys and offered to release any more they consider relevant.

Taubes said he is now is pressing with the new request for notes, recordings, power burn tests, and reports confirmer Turner was under investigation for assault with a firearm, in the quest of establishing which crime was the bases for his grant of advanced rehabilitation.

On the same day as the affidavit was prepared, Turner signed a release allowing his sealed criminal history to be disclosed. Taubes said Turner authorized this release to ​“expose” his deal with police and prosecutors.

Salters was prosecuted and tried by former New Haven Assistant State’s Attorney James G. Clark. His case was investigated by New Haven police detective Daryl Breland, who was the witness to the allegedly false original witness statement.

The same state’s attorney offered a witness a reduced jail sentence for a separate criminal case in return for his testimony as part of a 1994 murder trial. The four convicts, including Darcus Henry were later freed in 2013 after receiving life sentences in light of a subsequent second look at the case. Henry attended the press conference Wednesday in support of Salters.

“Gaylord’s situation is a little different from mine. I had life in prison. So there’s days you wake up not knowing if you’re gonna make it out. He has daylight regardless, however that still doesn’t diminish that he’s in there fighting for his freedom and he missed out 21 years,” Henry said.

“We have seen Mr. Clark’s prosecutions be overturned in the past. Now is the time for the state’s attorney’s office and the New Haven police department to come clean about the lying actions of its former prosecutors that continue to victimize and brutalize Mr. Gaylord Salters.” said Taubes.

In a phone interview from prison, Salters said fighting for his freedom in prison has been ​“extremely difficult.”

He said he struggles to hold onto printed legal papers and other files. ​“These are the types of roadblocks that you encounter when you’re fighting a wrongful conviction and I’ve been doing this for 20 years.”

“It’s time for them to conduct the integrity review and get down to the bottom of it. This is the New Haven Police Department of today and this is the New Haven State Attorney’s Office of today, so what they do in this case is going to determine what their morals, beliefs, and values are,” Salters said.

At the press conference, Salters’ family members handed out T‑shirts with “#freeLORD.” His children have worked with other family and friends to organize rallies, publish books, and raise awareness about Salters through social media.

His oldest daughter, Gabrielle Salters, said she talks over the phone with him almost every day. She said he has always been a ​“great dad.”

“I know a lot of people who have their dad right in the same city as them, but they’re not involved in their life at all,” she said.

Salters mother, Gloria Johnson, flew up from North Carolina Tuesday to attend the press conference. ​“I’m just praying that the New Haven Police Department will do what they need to do to rectify this injustice not just for him, but for his children too and for me as his mother,” she said.

Johnson said at the time of the 1996 shooting incident, she knew her son was upstairs at home. She said he came home early from church and was looking after one of his daughters, who was sick.

Gaylord Salters Jr. said he wants the truth surrounding his father’s case to be revealed” ​“My father missed out on my whole life, and it wasn’t his fault.”