by Laura Glesby
Stefon Morant spent 21 years in prison for a double murder he never committed. His wrongful conviction is one of many poised to cost the city.
New Haven has so far paid outside attorneys nearly $1.15 million for legal defenses in Stefon Morant’s wrongful conviction lawsuit — including $121,000 for the lawyers defending Vincent Raucci, the corrupt cop at the center of the case.
Meanwhile, the Elicker administration has now severed ties with the city’s former lawyer, Thomas Gerarde of the law firm Howd & Ludorf, while appealing a federal jury’s decision to award Morant $38 million.
Gerarde had spearheaded a legal strategy involving doubling down on the validity of Morant’s conviction. He argued in court that Morant was guilty of the 1990 double murder for which he was convicted, and that Raucci never coerced witnesses to testify against Morant and his co-defendant, Scott Lewis.
Gerarde pursued this defense despite an FBI investigation into Raucci’s alleged double life as a drug dealer, another former detective’s sworn testimony that Raucci coerced witnesses, a judge’s decision to overturn Lewis’ conviction, the state’s $5.84 million award for Morant’s wrongful conviction compensation claim, and the city’s own $9.5 million settlement in Lewis’ parallel lawsuit.
“The legal strategy and arguments that were made at the beginning of the trial were not what was agreed upon beforehand,” Mayor Justin Elicker told the Independent in a statement.
“The city’s legal argument,” he said, “was intended to focus on that the New Haven Police Department had clear policies, practices and training for its officers at the time of this incident and never condoned the deviation from this code of conduct or an individual’s constitutional civil rights.”
The city provided details about the cost of its legal representation in Morant’s lawsuit and in wrongful conviction lawsuits from six other individuals on Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Independent.
All of this comes after a month-long trial in Hartford culminated, on May 29, with a federal jury awarding Morant $38 million and finding the City of New Haven, Raucci, and former Det. Vincent Maher liable under federal law for the misconduct that sent Morant to prison for 21 years. The city is currently appealing that verdict.
The city is required to pay legal fees not only for its own outside counsel, but for the lawyers representing all former city employees.
Thus far, the city has paid the following law firms for defense in the lawsuit, which Morant first filed in 2022:
- $400,490.67 to Howd & Ludorf for representing the City of New Haven.
- $120,969.34 to Karsten & Tallberg for representing Vincent Raucci, the former detective and alleged drug dealer whom the jury found most directly responsible for framing Morant.
- $146,725.51 to Susman Duffy & Segaloff and $261,541.03 to Ryan Ryan DeLuca LLP for representing Michael Sweeney, the former detective who eventually came forward about Raucci’s witness coercion.
- $112,939.32 to William J. Melley for representing three other co-defendants: Vaughn Maher, Robert Lawlor, and Joseph Pettola.
- $107,295.82 to Williams, Walsh & O’Connor for representing the estate of the late former police chief Nicholas Pastore.
In total, these legal costs amount to $1,149,961.69 paid for by the city.
In addition to finding the city, Raucci, and Maher liable for $38 million in connection with Morant’s wrongful conviction, the jury also found that Morant’s conviction was predicated on evidence fabrication, witness coercion, and a policy or practice of police misconduct in the New Haven Police Department.
The judgement is on hold as the city, Raucci, and Maher appeal the decision. If the award is upheld, Morant can collect from any or all of the three defendants.
The cost of the Morant lawsuit may serve as a barometer for future legal costs facing the city from other wrongful conviction lawsuits in motion.
In addition to Morant, six other people have wrongful conviction lawsuits in progress against the city. All of the plaintiffs are Black men from New Haven convicted of murder in the 1990s and eventually exonerated either by a court or by the state.
The city has so far spent $858,001.80 defending itself and former New Haven detectives in those six lawsuits. Outside lawyers have cost the city $120,483.75 for a linked pair of lawsuits from George Gould and the surviving family of Ronald Taylor, $615,326.97 for a lawsuit by Adam Carmon, and $122,191.08 for a lawsuit by Maceo Troy Streater (who happens to be a current city alder for Ward 21, a district that covers parts of Dixwell, Newhallville, and Prospect Hill).
The city has additionally retained lawyers for itself and three detectives in an upcoming pair of connected lawsuits by Vernon Horn and Marquis Jackson, who were convicted in 1999 and exonerated in 2018 by newly-surfaced evidence. According to the city’s Corporation Counsel, the city is partly covered by insurance in this case for “at least $4.995 million,” and the associated legal expenses have thus far not come at a direct cost to the city.
In total so far, the city has accumulated $2,007,963.49 in legal fees for all seven lawsuits.
How Other Cities Compare
In a statement, Mayor Justin Elicker argued that these expenses are comparable to the legal costs facing other cities. “It’s hard to believe,” he wrote, “but these high legal fees are typical for municipalities across the nation.”
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia has similarly faced a recent surge in legal costs connected to wrongful convictions, confronting $60 million in settlements and awards within an 18-month period from 2023 to mid-2024.
Elicker cited a 2016 analysis by Governing.com comparing legal, judgment, and settlement costs from 20 of the 25 largest cities in the United States. The analysis found a median annual cost of $12 million for the cities’ total payouts, insurance, and legal expense; it did not indicate how many lawsuits contributed to each city’s average annual cost.
The cities analyzed are all more than five times the size of New Haven, with substantially larger budgets.
If Morant’s jury award stands at about $1.8 million per year that he spent wrongfully incarcerated, it will reflect a high penalty compared to the vast majority of wrongful conviction awards across the country. According to the website of the Chicago-based law firm Loevy + Loevy, “Of all jury verdicts awarded to individuals wrongly incarcerated for multiple years, only a small number have ever broken the barrier of $1 million per year of wrongful imprisonment.”
“Whether we like it or not,” Elicker wrote, “we have no choice but to defend the city when we are sued and to pay for the legal defense of former city employees in these circumstances, which is very costly.” He also wrote, “It’s important that the city have strong legal representation to make a fair and strong defense and to protect the city and our collective interests.”
Elicker lamented the “incredibly challenging position” of having to defend “legal matters that happened two or three decades ago under a different administration… that unfortunately chose not to have insurance to cover most of these legal costs.”
While the city now has insurance, that insurance does not cover actions that predate the coverage.
Elicker argued that his administration has still “made a lot of progress to put the city on much firmer financial footing” through the annual budgeting process.
He committed to “engage in a manner that appropriately considers and balances the city’s legal and financial responsibilities and our values.”
City Hires New Lawyers
Meanwhile, as the city moves forward with an appeal of the Morant verdict, it has decided to retain a new lawyer.
Howd & Ludorf’s Thomas Gerarde had represented the city throughout the Morant trial.
Now, while appealing the jury’s verdict, the city has retained the law firm Wiggin & Dana as its new representation for an initial flat fee of $149,000.
Corporation Counsel Allison Jacobs wrote in a statement that, “to ensure the city is well-represented in the appeals process, the city has retained the law firm Wiggin and Dana to serve as lead outside counsel in the post-judgment phase of the lawsuit, Morant v. the City of New Haven, et al.”
“As we have stated before, it is important that the appropriate individuals and entities are held accountable,” Jacobs wrote, “and it is also important that New Haven taxpayers are not punished unfairly with enormous jury awards that will negatively impact our residents and financially harm the city.”
The city has additionally replaced Gerarde with lawyers from Wiggin and Dana for the Gould-Taylor and Streater lawsuits and from Shipman and Goodwin for the Horn-Jackson lawsuit.
Gerarde could not be reached for comment by the publication time of this article.