Horn, Jackson Cases Settled For $30.5M

by Laura Glesby and Thomas Breen

The Elicker administration has agreed to pay Vernon Horn and Marquis Jackson a total of $30.5 million to settle a pair of wrongful conviction lawsuits first filed in 2018.

The settlement, which now heads to the Board of Alders for approval, comes less than a month before jury selection had been slated to begin in September for a trial of the consolidated cases.

It marks the first set of wrongful-conviction settlements the Elicker administration has reached since a federal jury awarded Stefon Morant $38 million in another wrongful-conviction case which the city took to trial in May. (The city has appealed the Morant decision.)

Horn and Jackson are slated to each receive $15.25 million after spending 17 and 19 years, respectively, in prison for a murder they did not commit. According to Mayor Justin Elicker, the city would directly pay $12.75 million to each of the plaintiffs. The city’s insurance would cover the rest of the settlement, along with attorney’s fees.

“No amount of money can give me back the 17 years that were taken from me,” wrote Horn in a statement released on Wednesday by his legal team at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP. “I lost years with my family, I lost people I loved while I was in prison, and I missed precious time with my daughter that I can never get back. But I never stopped fighting to prove that I was innocent, even when it felt like no one wanted to hear the truth. I am grateful to everyone who stood beside me and kept fighting for me.” 

He thanked his daughter, his lawyers, Mayor Justin Elicker “for putting an end to this nightmare,” and Judge S. Dave Vatti for mediating the case. “And I want to thank [New Haven State Sen.] Gary Winfield for his leadership in changing the law in Connecticut.”

City spokesperson Lenny Speiller wrote in a separate email statement on Wednesday that, pending the Board of Alders’ approval of this settlement, the city will bond for the amount not covered by insurance.

“As mayor, I am deeply sorry for what Mr. Horn and Mr. Jackson have gone through and experienced,” Elicker is quoted as saying in Wednesday’s statement. “They were New Haven residents like us, with their entire lives in front of them, and I hope these settlements will now help them put this difficult chapter behind them and move forward.” (Read the mayor’s full statement below.)

Both Jackson and Horn were incarcerated on convictions related to a robbery-turned-murder at a deli in 1999. As with other wrongful conviction cases that have surfaced in recent years, a witness eventually recanted, stating that a cop had threatened to pin the murder on him.

The men were exonerated after a reinvestigation uncovered nearly 140 pages of phone records found inside the home of retired assistant chief Petisia Adger, a former detective assigned to the case. The phone records had not been released to Horn and Jackson’s lawyers, and they contradicted the state’s evidence against Horn and Jackson. The pair walked free from prison in 2018.

That same year, Jackson and Horn filed lawsuits against the City of New Haven and four former detectives involved in their convictions: Petisia Adger, Leroy Dease (now represented by his estate executor), Daryle Breland, and James Stephenson.

They alleged that New Haven detectives coerced witnesses, fabricated and suppressed evidence, and failed to follow through on untapped leads.

In February 2025, the state’s Judiciary Committee agreed to pay a $4,817,954 wrongful-conviction award to Horn and a $5,312,921 award to Jackson.

Morant and Horn and Jackson aren’t the only Black men who have sued New Haven for wrongful convictions based on alleged police misconduct. The city is also staring down potential future trials for ongoing lawsuits filed by Adam Carmon, George Gould, the surviving family of Ronald Taylor, and Maceo Troy Streater (who happens to be a current city alder for Ward 21).

The settlement proposal in the Horn-Jackson case comes soon after the Elicker administration jettisoned outside attorney Thomas Gerarde of the firm Howd & Ludorf, who had also represented the city in the Morant trial.

Federal court records show that the City of New Haven was most recently represented in the Horn-Jackson case by Shipman & Goodwin’s Elizabeth Buchanan, Chelsea McCallum, Megan Celeste Medlicott, and Morgan Paul Rueckert.

Federal court records also show that the various parties held a two-hour-and-45-minute settlement conference in the Horn-Jackson case on Tuesday before Judge Vatti.