“Johnny J” Arrested After $4.2M 2nd Chance

4.2 million that could have gone toward balancing New Haven's budget..... this is justice in Amerika!

"Johnny Jermaine Johnson got a $4.2 million ticket to a new life..."

Bullsh!t, dude was locked up for years for no good reason. We shouldn't need tickets to new lives.

You'd hope that life would get easy after reaching 40 with a full bank account, but inner peace isn't guaranteed by wealth or experience.

This is really sad. However, money cannot buy common sense nor can it buy back years behind bars. Send a man to prison and treat him less than human while there, then give him millions of dollars....tragic combination. I pray this is not true. If it is, what a tragedy.

what happens when we put a criminal back on the streets due to a technicality. Our system is seriously broken.

The City of New Haven was held responsible for its actions and now Johnny Jermaine should be too.

Green: The city didn't mess up, the state's attorney did in not revealing exculpatory evidence and being silent while its witness perjured himself. Had the jury known that the witness had been induced to testify, it might still have convicted Johnson. But the deal offered the witness certainly implicated the witnesses credibility. As it is, the fact that the witness lied under oath further erodes his credibility. It can only presume that the state's attorney decided not to retry Johnson because that witness, of dubious credibility, was key to its case, and other evidence was either lacking or had gone stale.
Lookout: He wasn't put back on the streets due to a technicality. The court ordered a new trial, but the state's attorney, who had denied him a fair trial the first time, decided not to retry him.

If I recall correctly, there was a pile of evidence against these guys and a victim/witness, but they were released from prison because in the original trial, the DA failed to inform the judge about a deal with that witness.

1644: Excellent point. My original comment ( which appears to have been edited) stated that it appeared they had the right guy the first time but that he was set free due to prosecutorial misconduct. Maybe the wrong term to describe what happened but the fact is, the deal with the witness wasn't disclosed.

I agree with both points you made. If it had been disclosed, he might have been convicted anyway. And it wasn't the City that screwed up. Who paid the 4.2M? Was it the State or the City?

Green: One of the linked articles mentions the state's claims commissioner, so the state, not the city, paid. Note, I have no inside knowledge or recollection of this case. I don't know if Robn is correct that there was a "pile of evidence" beyond this witness, but, again, if such a pile, i.e., enough to convict without the tainted witness, existed when a new trial was ordered, I would have expected the state to retry him.
It seems NHI really changed the meaning of your comment with its edit.

[Paul: All we took out was nasty name-calling against the defendant. Against our policies.]

I guess I consider two eyewitnesses to be a lot of evidence. The state didn't retry because at the time of the prisoners release, one of the witnesses was dead and too much time had gone by to make it worth it for the prosecutors to retry (the prisoners had already served 2/3 of their sentences and by the time a retrial was complete, they'd probably have served 100% of the sentence.)

https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/4_murder_convicts_freed/

This is very sad but some stuff to keep in mind. The murder convictions of the 4 men were ridiculous and totally unjust. It was because of 2 so called eye witnesses. The supreme court said the first "eye witness" was a hopeless liar who even admitted during the trial that he would lie pretty much about anything at any time, and make up any story even under oath. That guy changed his story about who he saw commit the murders at least 4 times. The second "eye witness" was even worse. For years he said he told police he didn't see anything because he was hiding behind a box. But then he was arrested and was going to get about 35 years in prison. Thats when prosecutors offered to get him out if he went along with the story told by first eyewitness. There was no other pile of evidence against them. The other evidence was that the murderers were wearing ski masks and were shorter than any of the 4 who got convicted. The other evidence was from people who were with some of these 4 guys at the time of the murder. The jury ignored all that because they believed the second eye witness. The supreme court said even if his story could be believed, it was a really close call, but knowing the second guy committed perjury totally destroyed any and all evidence the state had. Prosecutors didn't fix the perjury because they knew that was all they had. So whatever you think of Johnny's latest possible crime, none of these 4 ever deserved to be in prison for all those years. Money cannot make up for spending that much time thinking you will die in prison. The money Johnny got is much less than other wrongly convicted people in Connecticut got for the same time behind bars. It would be better for "Amerika" and every place in it to fix the system so this kind of wrongful conviction doesn't happen in the first place.

84000,

Can you pls share your source of that information?

The Appellate Court opinion reviewing the evidence against Johnson and upholding his conviction:
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ct-court-of-appeals/1101736.html

An article in CT Mirror about the Claims Commissioner's decision to give a pile of money to folks whose convictions were overturned not because of their innocence, but because of prosecutorial misconduct:

https://ctmirror.org/2016/02/05/questions-about-a-16-8-million-award-and-the-meaning-of-innocence/


From the appellate court opinion, and accepted by earlier NHI reporting, Johnson was a member of a criminal gang, the Island Brothers. Accordingly, regardless of the fairness of his mirder trial, one should not be shocked at the trouble he is in in North Carolina.

Court of appeals ruling is irrelevant. Supreme court ruling is a higher court and later. https://casetext.com/case/adams-v-commr-of-corr-1

Ogman is first so called eye witness. Supreme court said

"Ogman's testimony was so inconsistent, both with respect to his own prior statements and testimony, and with respect to the testimony of other witnesses, that his overall veracity was, at best, highly suspect. The tenor of his testimony is best captured by an exchange between him and the petitioner's counsel following one of the many occasions on which Ogman was confronted with his own prior, contradictory testimony. The petitioner's counsel asked Ogman: "Is it true that your concept,your understanding of the concept of truth, is that it's fluid, that is to say, that it changes with the situation that you are in or the audience that you have?" Ogman answered simply: "Yes."

"Ogman repeatedly denied that he was a member of the Ghetto Boys and also denied that Andre, Smith, Green and Dwayne Clark were members of that gang. At one point, however, seemingly unaware that he already had testified to the contrary, Ogman openly acknowledged that both Andre and Dwayne Clark, as well as Smith and Green, were members of the Ghetto Boys."

"Ogman also gave varied accounts of his drug use, both on the night of the shooting and in general."

"Some of Ogman's falsehoods defy explanation."

"Ogman testified inconsistently that he was lying either facedown or faceup after he was shot. This fact is particularly significant because Ogman stated that he recognized the faces of the shooters only after he fell. He initially told Detective Thomas Trocchio of the New Haven Police Department, who took Ogman's statement following surgery, that he was lying facedown after he was shot...The next time he was asked, he stated that he had been lying faceup, but when he was reminded that he had told Trocchio that he had been lying facedown, he did not dispute the truth of his statement.

No normal person could believe anything Ogman said. He's a total liar about everything. Other eye witness was Andre and supreme court said about him that

"Andre is the only witness other than Ogman who identified the petitioner as one of the shooters." See that's super important. Nobody but Ogman the liar and Andre ever identified any of the 4 guys convicted. Nothing else at all tied these guys to the murder. Nothing else.

It was later learned Andre was also lying under oath to get out of prison. At trial Andre admitted that he didn't see any shooters because he was hiding behind a utility box and only learned their names when Ogman told him who the shooters were. Court said Andre had "extensive criminal record" about dishonesty crimes like theft, impersonating people, and lying to police. So prosecutors knew he'd lie again to get out of prison time again. So for 2 years he says he didn't see anything and then he totally changes his story. Ya right. And then he tells this lie "Andre also emphatically and repeatedly denied that he had been offered or promised any consideration in exchange for his cooperation. He stated that he only sought justice and denied that he expected any leniency in return for his testimony." Then he says he didn't tell police for 2 years because he wanted to get revenge. Really. He didn't turn them in because he wanted to get revenge? How stupid is that.

Then to make it all worse. The prosecutor knew Andre lied under oath but then still told the jury that Andre was very honest and would not lie.

Anyway, go read supreme court and its obvious there was never ever any evidence to tie any of the 4 guys to the murder other than 2 totally obvious and known liars who made up stories and changed stories and then prosecutors who lied about it. Other witnesses who are not liars said they were with these guys when the murder happened.

Just cause Johnny maybe shot someone in 2019 doesn't mean any of these 4 murdered anyone in 1996.