Re: 11/23/00 - New Haven Advocate: Who You Calling Yellow?
More shady tactics by New Haven's men in blue.
Who You Calling Yellow?
More shady tactics by New Haven's men in blue.
By Colleen Van Tassell
Published 11/23/00
While the one-person grand jury in New Britain still probes the fate of top New Haven cops, their compadres in the detective bureau are turning yellow.
At an unrelated evidence suppression hearing this month, a lawyer defending a young man in a multiple shooting presented evidence that detectives investigating a case "helped" a witness pick out a suspect.
How? By showing the witness, whom one of the detectives has known for a decade, a mug shot that looked as if it ran smack into a yellow highlighter.
The yellow mug shot is the latest revelation about the tactics of the scandal-ridden New Haven detective bureau. (For complete coverage, see our Web archive, <www.newhavenadvocate. com/articles/chaoslist. html>.) Right now, the city awaits the results of a state grand jury investigation, sparked by the news that detectives "lost" the tape of an interview with an eyewitness who identified a murder suspect, and kept the interview transcript in a desk drawer for two years instead of turning it over to North Haven police, who are heading the investigation into the still-unsolved killing. Two high-ranking cops are on indefinite leave awaiting the conclusion of the grand jury investigation, which could result in arrests.
The latest case: 22-year-old Tyree Epps is accused of first-degree assault for a multiple shooting on Wayfarer Street in the summer of 1999. The police report says cops canvassed the neighborhood and spoke to "anonymous" sources who said they heard shots but didn't see anything. A week later, detectives Michael Hunter and Clarence Willoughby, with mug shots in hand, drove to the home of a witness who claims to have seen the shooter(s) walk past her window. The witness picked Epps out of the eight photos.
This was hardly a shock, though, seeing as Epps' photo was the only one with a yellow background. The other seven had neutral backgrounds.
At the Nov. 9 suppression hearing, special public defender Auden Grogin tried to poke holes in the witness' identification of her client. Could the witness remember if the suspect had any facial hair? No. Did she remember what he was wearing? No. Height and weight? No. The witness, who's near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other, said she was sure Epps was the guy she saw outside her window, 70 feet away at 2 in the morning without her glasses. But she'd seen Epps before in the neighborhood.
She's also seen Detective Hunter before.
The witness testified to knowing Hunter for at least 10 years. "I knew him before he became a cop," she testified. When probed further, the witness said Hunter did not coax her into identifying the defendant, but that she was under the impression that the suspect was in one of the photos. The witness said it wasn't a friendly exchange; rather, it was all business.
All business or funny business? Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at Williams College in Massachusetts who testifies on eyewitness reliability, took the stand and testified that the way Hunter presented the single yellow photo cast a "spotlight" on the mug shot, rendering the I.D. unreliable.
Kassin--who says in an interview that he agrees to testify in only about 5 percent of the trials he's asked about--testified that the yellow photo immediately drew the witness's eye directly to it. Kassin testified that the way the mug shot was presented runs afoul of evidence guidelines set up by the National Institute of Justice.
Police Chief Melvin Wearing declines to comment on the specifics of the case, but says in a written statement that a challenge to a photo board "doesn't mean that an officer has done something improper."
Challenging evidence "is the job of the defense attorney and part of the trial process," adds Wearing.
State Superior Court Judge Bruce Thompson will rule sometime this week on whether the evidence was tainted.
This incident is another boil on the already scarred New Haven detective bureau.
In June, the Advocate reported that Detective Edwin Rodriguez got caught on tape coaxing a crime victim/witness during an investigation. (See "Numero Dos," June 15.)
Rodriguez apparently steered the victim to identify a certain suspect by whispering "numero dos"--the number of the suspect's mug shot. He also apparently distorted the victim's statement in translating it from Spanish to English. Rodriguez got caught--on tape. He got caught in court by a defense attorney who pointed out glaring contradictions between the witness' actual words on tape and the witness statement Rodriguez wrote.
The Spanish-speaking victim told the detective that it was too dark to make a positive ID. But that statement is not found in Rodriguez's English translation. On tape, the witness said he thought that mug shot number two, the one Rodriguez whispered to him, was "more or less" the picture of the person who robbed him. Rodriguez's translation says the victim "immediately identified' mug shot number two.
The defendant pleaded guilty. His lawyer maintained his client never got a fair shot from the outset.
E-mail: cvt@newhavenadvocate.com
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