The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
TRIALS OF 4 CENTURIES By Jessica Lerner
From historic to horrific: trials in New Haven
NEW HAVEN — On Feb. 14, 1642, magistrates were informed by a planter of New Haven Colony that a sow he had recently purchased had given birth to a malformed, one-eyed piglet.
The animal had been born dead, but the dead piglet reportedly resembled George Spencer, a former servant of the man who had sold the sow, Judge Jon C. Blue wrote in his well-researched book. “The Case of the Piglet’s Paternity: Trials From New Haven Colony, 16391663.”
“In the middle of the seventeenth century, judges in the short-lived New Haven Colony presided over a remarkable series of trials ranging from murder and bestiality, to drunken sailors, frisky couples, faulty shoes, and shipwrecks. The cases were reported in an unusually vivid manner, allowing readers to witness the twists and turns of fortune as the participants battled with life and liberty at stake,” the listing about Blue’s book on Amazon says.
The trials present “a vivid panorama of the life of the colony,” Blue wrote.
Blue, a Superior Court judge who has presided over a number of high-profile cases, notes in the book that a time traveler might not recognize the courts of New Haven. There were no juries and, in a “typical case” no lawyers either, he wrote. He also notes at that time, New Haven courts were on the “free flowing and improvisational” side. The colony, Blue notes, “was governed by biblical law,” and judges, noted as “persons of intelligence and learning working in a differently constructed judicial system” and with a worldview “quite different from our own” but also “consulted with the local clergy.”
Life in Connecticut was clearly very different then: In one case, arising out of a Wethersfield slaying, a convicted Native American’s head was removed and displayed publicly, Blue wrote.
But back to the case of the piglet.
Spencer was arrested, and the Puritan authorities deemed the birth a work of God, believing this was irrefutable evidence that an act of bestiality had taken place. When the trial began, the magistrates used Spencer’s retracted confessions and the stillborn piglet as proof of his guilt. On April 8, 1642, the sow was put to death by the sword and Spencer was hanged, according to Blue.
Since New Haven was founded in 1638, there have been thousands of trials throughout the 380 years. Some have catapulted beyond simple name recognition into the national spotlight, while others, which may not be remembered as truly historic, still serve as a snapshot of what life was like during that historic period and more modern times.
Elizabeth Godman
In the New England colonies, witchcraft was a capital crime. While the witchcraft trials during the 17th century are mostly associated with Salem, Mass., there were 47 total cases in Connecticut, with five of them taking place in New Haven between 1653 and 1657.
Elizabeth Godman was the first person tried for witchcraft in New Haven, which involved two separate proceedings, according to Joni Baker’s “Witchcraft in New Haven During the Seventeenth Century: The Elizabeth Godman Trials.”
On Aug. 4, 1653, Godman accused nine members of the New Haven community of slander, claiming they had given speeches that made others believe she was a witch, Baker wrote. While she failed to prove her case of slander, as the accused presented evidence that their claims were correct, in a twist of legal procedure, this civil case prompted a criminal inquiry into her odd and suspicious behavior.
Despite insufficient evidence to convict her of witchcraft during her first trial, Baker said Godman was closely watched and would be brought before the court if suspicions surrounding her actions persisted. Almost two years later, she was brought to court on the charges of witchcraft. The evidence in the second case was similar to that of the first, fitting into either the category of peculiar speech or behavior by Godman or strange occurrences with suspected supernatural powers, according to Baker.
Baker said while she was not declared guilty, the court told Godman she was suspected of being a witch, and if convicted, she would be sentenced to death. During her final court appearance, the court ruled they didn’t have enough evidence to convict her of witchcraft and sentence her to death, but it was enough to severely reprimand her, take 50 pounds from her estate and unless she was on her best behavior, she would be imprisoned again, Baker wrote.
During this time period, “New Haven was a community ruled by a patriarchal government and judicial system, where the men held all the offices in the political and legal institutions,” according to Baker. However, there was a place for women in the witchcraft cases of Godman. It was women who brought her to trial with reports of inappropriate conduct and their fears of her powers to bewitch, Baker said.
Baker said the language of witchcraft provided a way to address a discontented woman. At the time, allowing the accusations to come to trial may have been a political necessity, with Baker suggesting it was a way for discontented women to blow off some steam. Of the total witnesses against Godman, most were women, who ended up being the most influential participants in these legal proceedings, she said.
The Amistad captives
The Amistad case, deeply ingrained in New Haven history, appears to be the first successful civil rights case involving the rights of free people of color to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Constance Baker Motley wrote in “The Legal Aspects of the Amistad Case.” The decision of the Supreme Court expressly recognized that blacks had the right to access to federal courts to contest an attempt to enslave them and was the first legal milestone in the long, difficult struggle in the courts by people of color for equal justice under law, she argued.
In a story well-known to many in Greater New Haven, Howard Jones wrote in “Mutiny on the Amistad,” as the slave ship La Amistad was traveling along the coast of Cuba, 53 captive Africans, who had been kidnapped in the area of Sierra Leone in West Africa and then illegally sold into slavery, escaped their shackles and took over the ship. Led by Joseph Cinqué, they seized control of the ship and attempted to sail back to their homeland, only to be apprehended near Long Island and imprisoned. Along with being charged with mutiny and murder, the Africans were held in poorly ventilated cells where thousands of curious visitors paid to look at them, Jones wrote.
“When the Amistad captives were brought to New Haven, that served not only to unite the New Haven abolitionist movement but the country. Within the community, they rallied around the trial. Some of the churches began to develop programs and sewing clothes and providing food,” said Alfred Marder, president of the Amistad Committee.
On Jan. 7, 1840, amid an atmosphere of excitement, residents of the community squeezed into the narrow confines of the courtroom before Judge Andrew Judson. The following day, Cinqué testified, as the large audience listened with what one observed described as “breathless attention,” recounting his capture and the subjection to the cruel torture he and the other slaves had faced, according to Jones.
Despite the prosecution’s attempts to discredit the slaves’ testimonies, Jones said the abolitionists argued the Africans were victims of illegal kidnapping, and were, therefore, not slaves and free to return to Africa. While Judson ruled in favor of the abolitionist and Africans’ position, ordering the Africans be returned to their homeland, their victory was not yet won.
Jones wrote that having to again argue their case, this time in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, the slaves once again won their freedom and were eventually transported back to Africa, with the case also serving as a moral victory for abolitionists throughout the world, who preached the institution of human slavery should be abolished.
While the story has become more widely known in recent years, with a Cinqué statue in front of City Hall, Marder said “the legacy is more than just the statue. It’s symbolic and will be a constant reminder of the fact that the Amistad trial involved some of the leading figures of our community, it involved the churches, it involved the ordinary citizens who rallied to support the captives.”
The Black Panther trials
In 1970, there was a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party. The charges ranged from criminal conspiracy to felony murder, with all indictments stemming from the murder of 19-year-old Alex Rackley, who was found dead in a swamp, according to Henry Chauncey Jr., who was assistant to the president of Yale University at the time.
The first trial was Lonnie McLucas, the only person who physically took part in the killing but refused to plead guilty. Beginning with the pretrial proceedings, tens of thousands of supporters of the Panthers arrived in New Haven individually and in organized groups. The city for a brief moment captured the national spotlight as the epicenter of radical protests, with Chaucey explaining it was the anticipation of the trial that caused unrest.
“From the point of view of the university, it could have potentially posed quite a threat. During that time period, other universities had had protests and rallies where building had been burned and people had been killed; there had been some pretty serious stuff going on,” he said. “We made a decision, based on the experiences of other universities prior to that time. There was no point in trying to lock up the campus, bring in the National Guard, because it never worked . ... So we decided we would take the reverse action and ask the radicals to come and stay on the Yale campus. We would house them, and feed them, and take care of them.”
Chauncey said the rally was pretty peaceful, “almost partylike” except for the arrest of around 30 individuals for reported looting. He said they tried to keep classes going at Yale, but it was very difficult. He said the most important thing was nobody was hurt and no buildings were destroyed.
“What we were ultimately able to do was get the community to come together including the minority community in New Haven. By doing that, we found we were kind of able to have a unified view of what this weekend was going to be all about,” Chauncey said.
McLucas was acquitted on the most severe charges, with the jury convicting him instead on the sole charge of conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In October 1970, Bobby Seale, national party chairman, went on trial alongside Ericka Huggins, founder of the New Haven chapter. This trial was an even larger undertaking, involving a full four months of jury selection. The jury was unable to reach a verdict, deadlocked for both Seale’s and Huggins’ acquittals. On May 25, 1971, Judge Harold Mulvey stunned courtroom spectators by dismissing the charges against both of them, according to Chauncey.
Chauncey said, “the trial, itself, of Bobby Seale was rather uneventful. That was very low key and not a big event.” While Yale wasn’t in session, he believes the city of New Haven was pretty peaceful during the trial due to people’s beliefs that Seale would be acquitted.
Edward Grant
On July 16, 1973, 21-year-old Concetta “Penney” Serra was found dead in the stairway of the Temple Street Garage after having been stabbed in the chest with a 3-inch weapon. With the New Haven cold case going unsolved for 29 years, along with the timing and the not knowing, it contributed to the reputation of downtown New Haven as dangerous, said former New Haven Police Chief Nick Pastore.
“When a young person is murdered ... you like to bring (the cold case) to closure, so you can satisfy the family and the rest of the community,” Pastore said. “There’s a certain trauma associated with sudden death, especially of a young woman.”
He noted the times also played a role, as there was a lot of unrest and polarization during the 1960s.
“We had candidates for president get killed, we had Malcolm X get killed, we had Martin Luther King get killed. We were living in an era of the highest level of violence, so, of course, we’re going to feel not as safe as we’d like to feel when a young woman is brutally killed,” he said.
Over the years, several suspects emerged, including Serra’s former boyfriend; a patient at the dental office where Serra worked and a former classmate of Serra’s who reportedly threatened to do the same thing to his ex-wife that he did to Serra. All three eventually were eliminated due to alibis and blood evidence.
“It soon became a stranger-onstranger type of crime. Before, we were looking more at (Serra) knowing the person. Once you lose that, people wonder, ‘Do we have a serial killer on the lose?’ The level of anxiety jumps up,” Pastore said.
In 1973, one latent print developed from the exterior of a tissue box and two latent prints collected from the interior of Serra’s car were compared to the 70,000 fingerprints on file with State Police, but there was no match made during this time. Nearly 25 years later, in 1997, a latent-print examiner conducted a search of the print from the tissue box using the State’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System and matched the thumbprint to Edward Grant, who had been fingerprinted after being arrested for domestic violence in 1994, past New Haven Register articles stated.
In 2000, DNA testing conducted on the several blood samples collected from the handkerchief confirmed a match to Grant’s DNA profile. DNA expert Dr. Ladd testified the expected statistical frequency of this particular profile within the general population is one in 6.9 trillion. Grant was found guilty of the murder of Serra, and on Sept. 27, 2002, was sentenced to 20 years to life, according to past New Haven Register articles.
“Twenty-nine years ago, DNA wasn’t really a part of the process. As time goes on, research and development give us new tools to work with. We do more now with cameras, DNA, hairs and fibers,” Pastore said.
Cheshire triple homicides
On July 23, 2007, Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters, Hayley, 17 and Michaela, 11, were murdered, while her husband, Dr. William Petit Jr., was severely injured, during a home invasion in Cheshire.
Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky had planned to rob the Petit house at night. Komisarjevsky struck Petit on the head with a baseball bat and then tied him up in the basement.
The children and their mother were then bound and locked in their respective rooms, but Hayes and Komisarjevsky eventually escalated the aggravated nature of their crimes. HawkePetit was raped and strangled to death while her daughters died from smoke inhalation.
“A crime like this almost universally calls for retribution. They really want the people who committed the crime not rehabilitated; they want them punished. So when you get a really heinous crime like this where two people go in and murder and cause mayhem, where they kill and torture in cold blood, society usually looks at it, and they don’t want to deter, they don’t want to restrain, they don’t want to rehabilitate, they want retribution,” said former Branford Police Chief John DeCarlo.
He said a case like this it becomes a very “cause celebre,” with almost everyone gravitating toward punishment due to the magnitude and the cold-bloodedness of the crime, causing such a stir in the community that homeinvasion statutes were created.
“That’s a whole new thing. They actually committed a new type of crime.”
Steven Hayes was found guilty on 16 of 17 counts related to the home-invasion murders on Oct. 5, 2010, with the jury returning with a recommendation for him to be executed. Meanwhile, Komisarjevsky was convicted on all 17 counts, with the jury recommending the death penalty. When Connecticut abolished the death penalty in August 2015, the death sentences were effectively commuted to life in prison, though the sentencing took place prior to that date, the Register has reported.
“There’s a big outcry, and a lot of it is caused by fear. When we look at the commonality that we had with this family, we realize that this could have happened randomly to us,” DeCarlo said. “It becomes frightening to people, and when that happens, we respond in a very negative way. It’s hard to be understanding, when you’re afraid.”
While few cases in modern day Connecticut have drawn the attention of state residents the way the slaying of a mother and her children did, many murders in the city and region — in some cases where more than one person died — have drawn fear and widespread grief and pain for generations of families and friends.
In 2011, an arsonist set fire to a Fair Haven apartment building, killing a mother, her secondgrade son and her niece.
Wanda Roberson, 41, her son, Quayshaun Roberson, 8, and her niece, Jaqueeta Roberson, 21, died in that fire.
In 2015, after the man who set the fire on Wolcott Street, Hector “Boom Boom” Natal, then 29, was sentenced to life in prison, the victims’ loved ones stood outside the courthouse and said, “We got justice.”
Many of the cases have been adjudicated in state Superior Court in New Haven and continue to be heard there.