Re: 4/22/03 - YDN: Ex-lecturer adds university officials to lawsuit
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VAN DE VELDE SUES
Ex-lecturer adds university officials to lawsuit
Mary E. O’Leary, Register Topics Editor April 22, 2003
NEW HAVEN — James Van de Velde has added Yale officials as defendants in a previous federal civil rights suit, accusing them of working with local police in publicly branding him a suspect in the slaying of Suzanne Jovin.
Jovin, a Yale senior at the time, was found dying in the city’s East Rock neighborhood on Dec. 4, 1998, after being stabbed 17 times.
Van de Velde, 43, a former political science lecturer at Yale, has consistently maintained his innocence.
He is the only suspect named by New Haven police in the high-profile killing, which generated national media coverage. No one has been charged, and the suit states that "all evidence points overwhelmingly to (Van de Velde’s) innocence."
The Yale officials named in the suit include President Richard C. Levin, Secretary Linda Lorimer, Police Chief James Perrotti, Acting Public Affairs Director Thomas Conroy, and Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead.
Helaine Klasky, the university’s spokeswoman, said officials were "surprised" by the allegations. "We believe that Yale officials acted entirely properly throughout the investigation," she said.
Van de Velde sued New Haven police in December 2001 for a repeated "public branding" of him as the only named suspect, which, the suit said, has damaged his "reputation, his job status, his present and future career, and his health and well-being."
The suit charges that police, in conjunction with "one or more of the Yale defendants, anonymously caused plaintiff’s name to be leaked to the press as the ‘prime suspect’ in the case."
It further charges that the Yale and police defendants officially caused Van de Velde to be identified as a suspect and that both sets of defendants have refused to retract the label despite "a complete lack of evidence."
Van de Velde said the Yale officials had a strong interest in minimizing negative publicity from the case and in publicizing any information showing it was not a random act.
Van de Velde, who was Jovin’s senior thesis adviser, twice was questioned early on by police: on Dec. 7 when he gave them a copy of her thesis, and then again on Dec. 8, an interview that turned into a four-hour interrogation, at which time he denied killing the student.
His suit referred to two stories in the New Haven Register. The first was on Dec. 8, 1998, in which police said the victim "knew her killer." Van de Velde was quoted in that report, with several other people, as praising the victim. The second was on Dec. 9, in which it was stated that police were questioning "a Yale educator." Van de Velde was not named in the Dec. 9 report, but the suit charges that it was apparent the article referred to him.
Yale announced on Jan. 11, 1999, that city police had told them that Van de Velde was in a "pool of suspects" and that police would be questioning people on campus about him.
The suit charges that after that official branding of Van de Velde as a suspect, the former intelligence officer "was charged, tried and convicted in the media, and therefore in the minds of much of the public — without regard to facts, logic, legal standards, or the rule of law."
As a result of the actions of Yale officials and police, Van de Velde said he lost his job at the university, his status was altered with the U.S. Naval Reserves and he was dismissed from a master’s program at Quinnipiac University.
He has also sued Quinnipiac.
The suit was amended this month after a conference call with a federal judge, said New Haven Corporation Counsel Thomas Ude.
Ude said the city was in default for not answering the original December 2001 suit by Van de Velde on time, but the judge is allowing it to go forward.
A penalty for default can mean an automatic win for the plaintiff, but Ude said the judge wanted to see the suit decided on its merits. He estimated it could take several years for the writ to make its way through the courts.
Van de Velde’s attorney, David Grudberg, had no comment, and Van de Velde could not be reached.
©New Haven Register 2003
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