George Gould and Ron Taylor will have to wait at least another three weeks to get out of prison.
Department of Corrections Photo
The delay comes as the state moves to appeal a decision that overturned their murder convictions.
Gould and Taylor (pictured left and right) are serving 80-year sentences for the murder of Fair Haven bodega owner Eugenio DeLeon Vega on July 4, 1993. After two key state witnesses recanted their statements, a judge ruled last week that they had suffered “manifest injustice,” and were actually innocent. In a seething 58-page decision, Superior Court Judge Stanley Fuger reversed their convictions, vacated their arrest warrants, and ordered that they be immediately released from prison.
However, freedom did not come so quickly.
First, their release was delayed until Monday at 2 p.m., after Appellate Court Chief Judge Joseph P. Flynn approved a request by the state for more time to review the decision.
On the brink of Gould and Taylor’s scheduled release time at 2 p.m. Monday, the appellate court issued a ruling that effectively delayed the prisoners’ release for at least another 20 days.
Monday’s ruling came in response to a request from the state to review a decision made by Judge Fuger. Fuger ruled last week that there should be no “automatic stay” of the execution of Fuger’s orders in this case. Judge Fuger ordered that his orders should take effect without delay, meaning the defendants should be immediately released from prison.
In an eight-page motion Monday, Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Michael O’Hare asked the appellate court to review that ruling. The state argued that by the Connecticut Practice Book Sec. 61 – 11, there should be an “automatic stay” of Judge Fuger’s orders giving the losing party time to appeal. Click here to read the state’s motion.
In his decision Monday, the Appellate Court agreed with the state that a period of “automatic stay” is appropriate. The appellate court sent the matter back to Judge Fuger’s habeas court in Rockville, so that Judge Fuger could apply the appropriate rules.
The “automatic stay” provision gives the losing party 10 days to file a petition asking the trial judge to certify a petition to have the case looked at by a higher court, then another 20 days to give time for appeals. The state made a petition for certification Monday, within the allotted 10-day window. Judge Fuger had yet to rule on that petition as of press time.
Bottom line, the means that the prisoners will have to wait at least 20 days before their release, according to a clerk in the Rockville Superior Court. That waiting period may change if Judge Fuger holds a hearing on the matter. No hearings have been scheduled yet, the clerk said.
What is the state thinking?
I certainly hope these two men, found innocent by a judge, find representation to make the State pay dearly for this.
None of us can afford it, but who are we to complain, when the State we live in is so inept and unthinking as to callously demand that innocent men spend almost 20 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit?