Source: New Haven Advocate (CT)
Contact:  http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/
Copyright: 1998 New Mass Media, Inc.
Author: Jayne Keedle
Pubdate: 22 Oct 1998
Note: This is part 2 of 2

THE TRUTH COULD SET THEM FREE

At the first trial, two women were holding out for a not-guilty verdict.
After a week of the jurors eating together, the two hold-outs on the jury
found themselves at a table, alone. By the end of the week, the rest of the
jury wasn't even speaking to them. The pressure proved to be too much.
Although they were crying when individually polled by the judge -- at
Ullmann's request -- both women returned guilty verdicts. One of the women
later called Ullmann and apologized, but that didn't help Valentine.

Thinking about the verdict "gives me an eerie, nauseous feeling," one of
the jurors at the first trial says today. This juror was surprised to learn
that the two detectives had been sued for taking false statements and
leaving out exculpatory evidence in other cases. If the jury had heard
that, at least this juror would have "probably" voted not guilty.

Even without that evidence, this juror says the case never seemed fully
convincing. The juror just kept thinking about the eyewitness who described
the shooter as someone who (unlike Valentine) had a beard. Eventually,
though, the pressure in the jury room wore her down.

"We owe it to the state of Connecticut to put this criminal behind bars,"
this juror recalls another juror, a state employee, vigorously arguing.

After the verdict was returned, Valentine turned to face the jury and the
victims' families. He looked them right in the eye. "I feel I got convicted
on a sympathy level for the victims' families," Valentine says. "I told
them I'm sorry about their loss, but I told them I did not commit these
crimes and I felt the system failed."

Ullmann's next move was an appeal. He had good grounds for one. At the
first trial, only one witness, Chris Roach, who was himself shot the night
his friends died, identified Valentine as the shooter. And that's not what
Roach told police at first.

According to court documents, when he was interviewed on the morning of the
murders, police described him as uncooperative, initially saying he hadn't
seen who shot the victims. He again refused to give a statement to the
police two days later. When he finally gave them a statement two weeks
later, he said he was drunk that night, had "blacked out" from drinking and
didn't see the shooter, according to court documents.

Two years later, in February 1993, Roach changed his story. This time he
said he was drunk, but he did see who shot his friends that night. He said
he had been too afraid to say anything before. In March 1993, he picked
Valentine's picture out of a photo array at the police station.

The timing of this sudden recall -- two years after the event and in
exchange for a plea bargain agreement -- is the kind of testimony that
Ullmann could, and did, challenge as questionable. Roach, after all, had an
incentive to tell the police what they wanted to hear. He had just been
extradited to Connecticut from Georgia, charged with a 1991 shooting.

The first time Roach identified Valentine as the shooter was immediately
after the state agreed to drop criminal charges pending against him for
attempted assault in the first degree, and two counts of reckless
endangerment in the first degree. For that crime, Roach had faced a
mandatory minimum sentence of five years, a maximum of 27 years.

Accordingly, Ullmann brought this out in court, along with the fact that
the first time Roach identified Valentine he was in a Connecticut jail
facing these charges. But there was more to the story that the jury didn't
hear at the first trial.

Crystal Greene, a relative of Roach, had run into Roach just a month before
the court case at New Haven train station. At that time, she said, Roach
told her he didn't see the shooter. He told her he was going to testify
that Valentine did it because someone had to "pay the price."

By excluding Crystal Greene's testimony at the first trial, the state
Supreme Court ruled on appeal, "the trial court abused its discretion."
And, as a result of these findings, the Supreme Court threw out the first
guilty verdict to make way for a second trial. This was great news for
Valentine. He bragged to other inmates he was going home.

Overall, the second trial didn't go well for Valentine, however. Although
Ullmann was finally able to get Crystal Greene on the stand, she didn't
make a very good witness. She seemed nervous and was easily confused by
assistant state's attorney Jim Clarke, the prosecutor in the second trial.

Like Pepper before him, Clarke also presented the recanting witnesses as
"hostile." In doing so, he let the jury know they weren't on the side of
the "people" in the case of State v. Valentine. It came down to the word of
Higgins, a woman with a criminal record, against that of Det. Greene, whose
history as the defendant in a wrongful arrest lawsuit was off limits.

The second jury took eight days to reach a verdict, almost a court record
in New Haven, according to Ullmann. They reviewed every piece of evidence
the state had presented.

"The second trial was like reading a book you've read for the second time
- -- you've read it already," Valentine says. And the ending was the same as
it was the first time. "My prayer, my hope, was that the system was you
were innocent until proven guilty," he adds. He now no longer believes that.

Valentine took the second verdict hard, but perhaps not as hard as his
family. His oldest son, now 13, was particularly vulnerable. "Daryl sent
money to that boy every two weeks," Guimares says. "When his father got
convicted again, he freaked out."

Valentine's eldest son ended up in juvenile detention. His grandmother and
Valentine's wife -- the boy's step-mother -- have since obtained custody.
They're hoping with a little love, a little luck, things might work out.
"It's hard on everybody," Guimares says. "I'm on disability and I keep a
phone bill at $300 to $400 a month because I tell Daryl to call me. I worry
about his son constantly. [Daryl] begs him, 'Don't let me look and see you
in the cell next to me.'"

The second loss also hit Tom Ullmann hard."The only silver lining from a
defense attorney's point of view is these were death penalty cases and the
prosecutor did not proceed on it," Ullmann says. "[Daryl] has no faith in
the system, never did -- and unfortunately, I was unable to bolster that
faith."

Ullmann has sent Valentine's case to the appellate court for a second
appeal. Still, he says, "I'm worried this Supreme Court's not going to
reverse a conviction a second time."

Valentine, conspicuous in his prison issue orange jump suit, leans back in
his chair as he tells his story, arms folded in front of him. He is
studying for the GED, works while in prison and has had only five tickets
for bad behavior in eight and a half years, most of those coming after he
lost his appeal.

If other cases are any measure, Valentine's last, best hope is that someone
will ultimately come forward with proof that someone else committed the
crime. He knows there are people out there who know what really
happened."We've continued to look for who the shooter was," Ullmann says.
"You keep hoping you get a lead."

"I'm very angry. I got life for something I didn't do. I believe the police
are crooked, the court system is crooked. It's just a script, a play, to
me. The system already knows what it's going to do to you," Valentine says.
"They always said, 'The truth would set you free,' but I could see that
didn't happen. When I came to jail in 1989, I used to hear inmates saying
they were innocent. I used to laugh at them. You don't think nothing like
this can happen." 
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Checked-by: Mike Gogulski