Police Misconduct Protesters Press For Probe

As Maleek Jones waited within the walls of a Suffield prison, his voice reached the 25 protesters calling for his freedom by way of a recording: ​“I just have a hope that somehow, justice will find me,” Jones said as protest footage flashed across a TV screen.

A group of criminal justice reform advocates cast a spotlight on Jones’ story on Monday afternoon, along with the stories of two dozen others whose criminal convictions were either overturned or revealed to have involved official misconduct. 

The protest, called ​“Injustice Amongst Us: Seven Days of Proof With Truth,” was the first of a weeklong series of rallies planned for outside the federal prosecutors’ office in the Connecticut Financial Center at 157 Church St. (from June 12 to 16) and the New Haven Police Department headquarters at 1 Union Ave. (from June 17 to 18).

Gaylord Salters, a criminal justice activist who had convened the protest as the state’s Conviction Integrity Unit reviews his own conviction, said that one mission of the protest is to call on U.S. Attorney Vanessa Avery to launch a federal investigation into police and prosecutorial misconduct from the 1980s to the early 2000s that primarily targeted Black men in New Haven.

In the eyes of the court, Salters said, ​“the word of a police officer is solid. The word of a prosecutor is solid. Point blank, period. But the word of an individual who has spent 30 years in prison means nothing, even when he has the truth and proof to show that he was wrong.”

“These men were guilty until proven innocent,” said Ray Jones of the Yale Center for Law and Racial Justice.

“We’re here today to put an end to that era,” said Attorney Alex Taubes.

Salters said that New Haven prosecutors and police officers have ​“taken over 1,000 years of life” from people innocent of the crimes they committed.

Those 1,000-plus years account for 15 sentences of individuals who have officially been exonerated or pardoned due to flaws in their convictions. Half of overturned convictions across the state originated in New Haven.

The thousand years don’t include the decades of prison time served by New Haveners whose convictions have been cast in doubt by official misconduct, but have not been reversed. Salters himself falls in that latter category. He spent 20 years in prison for a shooting he maintains he never committed, even though the only witness against him recanted and attested to facing police pressure to pin the crime on Salters.

The thousand years don’t include the 65 years of prison time mandated for Maleek Jones, who has served 20 of those years already for the 1992 murder of Eddie Harp.

On Monday, Salters and co-organizers of the protest delved into the details of Jones’ case, along with the cases of Bobby Johnson, Stefan Morant, and Scott Lewis. They referred to specific prosecutors not by name but by anonymized numbers — ​“Detective #7,” in Maleek Jones’ case. (Earlier, Salters had said, ​“we’re trying to be diplomatic.”) They screened a short documentary produced by James Jeter of the Full Citizens Coalition and Sarah Stillman of the New Yorker on Jones’ case.

Jones was convicted of the 1992 murder of Eddie Harp — even though someone else eventually confessed under oath to the crime and admitted that Jones was innocent. That man, Tyrone Spears, had also been arrested in connection with the shooting; he had received a lower charge of manslaughter in exchange for testifying against Jones. Spears later said he’d been lying. An eyewitness came forward saying that cops had pressured her to name Jones as the shooter as well, though she hadn’t complied.

The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment for this story. New Haven Corporation Counsel Patricia King wrote in a statement, ​“Every individual deserves equal and impartial justice under the law. While the City cannot comment on the specifics of these cases due to anticipated or pending litigation, the City is committed to cooperating with all parties to ensure reasonable resolutions in matters where there have been wrongful convictions or miscarriages of justice in decades past due to actions of city employees.”

“I know him,” murmured Daryl Valentine as the documentary played on screen. ​“It’s hard to see.” Valentine had spent over three decades in prison for a conviction that hinged on incentivized and recanted testimony. He said he had spoken to Jones the week before Monday’s protest.

As the protest unfolded, Gina Blake walked out from an appointment at the Connecticut Financial Center building at 157 Church St. Though she had not heard of the stories presented, she soon found herself with tears in her eyes.

“My husband spent 20 years in prison,” Blake said. Her father spent a similar amount of time locked up. ​“I don’t know my daddy anymore. I am a product of this.”

“I feel it’s wrong what they’re doing to these guys,” she added.

Lauren Javier-Jones and baby Zoë Jones also happened upon the protest by accident. They were on their way to the library, but wound up staying for half an hour. 

Javier-Jones had heard about wrongful convictions as a national phenomenon, but had not known that in Connecticut, those cases have disproportionately been discovered in New Haven. 

“I want to raise my daughters to be active in this community, because if we don’t advocate for change, it won’t happen,” said Javier-Jones. 

During one of the transitions, Taubes turned to mayoral candidate and former federal prosecutor Liam Brennan, who had joined the protesters despite a recent concussion. Taubes asked Brennan if it’s likely that the U.S. attorney’s office would launch an investigation.

Brennan said he wasn’t sure. ​“This number is off the scales,” he said of the number of overturned convictions in New Haven, and said that an investigation would be worthwhile.

He noted that police and prosecutorial corruption is not only a matter of justice, but a ​“rule of law issue”: when people lose faith in the justice system, they lose faith in the value of following the law.

Jeter echoed that concept later in Monday’s rally. The wrongful convictions represent a broader pattern among law enforcement that lies ​“at the core of how our communities have been disengaged,” he said.

To Valentine, the decades of personal experience he accrued in the criminal justice system have severely curbed his expectations of a successful outcome from the protest. ​“It’s a positive move,” he said of the protest, ​“but I have no faith in the system.”

To Jones, who was aware of Monday’s protest even as he remained behind bars, there is no choice but to keep fighting. He is currently appealing a habeas case in federal court.

“Without hope, what do you have?” Jones said as the documentary drew to a close. ​“If I didn’t have hope, it would be over. You have to have hope.”