HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Despite finding “improprieties” were committed by a prosecutor, the Connecticut Supreme Court on Monday upheld the murder conviction of a man found guilty of killing his wife in a case that drew wide attention because the victim’s Fitbit exercise tracker contradicted his statements to police.
The justices ruled in a 6-0 decision that Richard Dabate was not deprived of a fair trial because of four missteps by the prosecutor they called “troubling,” including referring to one of Connecticut’s most notorious crimes while cross-examining the man.
Dabate, 48, was convicted of murder and other charges in the fatal shooting of Connie Dabate, 39, at the couple’s home in Ellington two days before Christmas in 2015 while their two young sons were in school. He’s serving a 65-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors said Dabate wanted his wife dead, in part, because he had a yearslong affair with another woman who was pregnant at the time of the killing and later gave birth to their child.
Dabate staged a phony crime scene, including tying himself up loosely with zip ties and stabbing himself with a box cutter, and told police an unknown intruder in camouflage broke into their home, killed his wife and assaulted him, authorities said.
State police said Dabate gave them a timeline of events that conflicted with data on his wife’s Fitbit, which showed she was moving around for about an hour after the time Dabate said she was shot.
Dabate testified in his defense and maintained his innocence, saying a large masked man with a voice like actor Vin Diesel was the killer.
Part of Dabate’s appeal questioned the reliability of the Fitbit evidence and whether the trial judge was wrong to have allowed it, but the Supreme Court upheld the data and its use.
Dabate also accused Tolland State’s Attorney Matthew Gedansky of multiple instances of impropriety, including Gedansky mentioning a notorious home invasion in Cheshire in 2007 while cross-examining Dabate. The home invaders killed a woman and her two daughters, ages 11 and 17, after terrorizing them for hours, while the woman’s husband survived a vicious beating.
Gedansky asked Dabate if he was trying to create a “little mini-Cheshire scene” in his own home. The trial judge upheld an objection by Dabate’s lawyer and asked Gedansky to rephrase the question, but Gedansky asked nearly the same exact question. The Supreme Court found Gedansky violated the judge’s order to rephrase.
“In referring to a ‘mini Cheshire,’ the prosecutor’s question was unnecessarily inflammatory because it compared the defendant to other notorious offenders or infamous figures,” Justice Joan Alexander wrote in the decision.
Gedansky did not immediately return an email message seeking comment Monday.
Dabate’s lawyer, Trent LaLima, said he and his client were disappointed with the court’s ruling.
“We believe we put forward strong issues supporting a new trial for Rick Dabate,” LaLima wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “We are evaluating the best next steps for Rick, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence for nearly a decade.”
The Supreme Court also found that Gedansky committed three other improprieties, including suggesting that the jury would have to be unintelligent or lazy to agree with the defense theory of the case.
“We disapprove of the improprieties committed by the prosecutor during the trial of this case in strong and unqualified terms and expect our message to be taken with the utmost seriousness by prosecutors,” the decision said.
The court said it agreed with Dabate that “the prosecutor engaged in multiple acts of impropriety at trial that we consider troubling.”
Justices, however, said the state’s case was very strong and Gedansky’s missteps did not overshadow testimony by 130 witnesses and the 600 exhibits presented during the five-week trial.
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A judge declared a mistrial Monday in the case of a Southern California judge charged with murder for fatally shooting his wife, the prosecutor’s office said.
Jurors in a Santa Ana courtroom could not reach a unanimous verdict in the case against now-74-year-old Orange County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson, said Kimberly Edds, a spokesperson for the county’s District Attorney’s office.
She said 11 of the 12 jurors had wanted to declare Ferguson guilty of second-degree murder.
Prosecutors charged Ferguson with murder, saying he shot his wife Sheryl with a handgun while the couple was watching television at their home in Anaheim Hills after they had been arguing. Testifying in his own defense, Ferguson did not deny shooting her, but said it was an accident.
Prosecutors said Ferguson had been drinking before he made a gun-like hand gesture toward his wife of 27 years during an argument at a restaurant on Aug. 3, 2023, over family finances. They said he later pulled out a real gun when she chided him to do so after they returned home to watch “Breaking Bad” along with their adult son Phillip.
Ferguson acknowledged firing the shot but contended it was an accident when he was removing the gun from an ankle holster where he always carried it and tried to place it on a table, but fumbled it.
The case was heard in a courtroom about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from where Ferguson presided over criminal cases as a judge and included extensive video footage of Ferguson talking to police outside his home after the shooting and after he was taken into custody. He was seen on video sobbing and saying his son and everyone would hate him.
The case has roiled the legal community in Orange County, which is home to 3 million people between Los Angeles and San Diego. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Eleanor J. Hunter presided over Ferguson’s case to avoid a conflict of interest.
Immediately after the shooting, Ferguson and his son both called 911, and Ferguson texted his court clerk and bailiff saying, “I just lost it. I just shot my wife. I won’t be in tomorrow. I will be in custody. I’m so sorry,” according to a copy of a text message shown to jurors.
Authorities said they found 47 weapons, including the gun used in the shooting, and more than 26,000 rounds of ammunition at Ferguson’s home and that the long-time former prosecutor had ample experience and training in operating firearms and in handling criminal cases involving gun violence.
Ferguson, who became a judge in 2015, is not currently presiding over a courtroom as the state’s constitution bars a judge who faces a felony charge from hearing cases even though they can continue to draw a salary.
Ferguson began his legal career in the district attorney’s office in 1983 and went on to work narcotics cases, for which he won various awards. He was president of the North Orange County Bar Association from 2012 to 2014.
He was admonished by the Commission on Judicial Performance in 2017 for posting a statement on Facebook about a judicial candidate “with knowing or reckless disregard for the truth of the statement,” and for being Facebook friends with attorneys appearing before him in court, according to a copy of the agency’s findings.
NEW YORK (AP) — Two members of an Eastern European criminal organization were “hired guns for the government of Iran” in a plot to assassinate an Iran-born journalist at her New York City residence three years ago, a prosecutor told a federal jury in an opening statement on Tuesday at the start of a trial for the men.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig said the plot to assassinate Masih Alinejad was part of Iran’s more than decade-long quest to silence a woman who exposed the Iranian regime for human rights abuses and for silencing political expression.
The prosecutor told jurors they will hear the author and contributor to Voice of America explain why the government of Iran wanted to silence her.
Alinejad fled Iran following the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election and became a U.S. citizen in October 2019. She will describe why she stands up to the Iranian regime, Gutwillig said, and why she “refuses to back down.”
“Masih Alinejad inspires others in Iran and around the world to do the same thing. That is why they want to kill her. And you will hear all of that from Ms. Alinejad herself,” he said.
On trial on a murder-for-hire count and other charges are Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, natives of Azerbaijan, which shares a border and cultural ties with Iran.
The prosecutor told jurors that key testimony will come from the man hired to kill Alinejad: Khalid Mahdiyev of Yonkers.
Detective Daniel Smith, the trial’s first witness, said Mahdiyev was arrested in July 2022 when he ran a stop sign in Alinejad’s neighborhood and was found to be driving despite a suspended driver’s license. A search of his car turned up a loaded AK-47 assault rifle, Smith said.
Defense attorneys for Amirov and Omarov told jurors in opening statements that their clients were not guilty and that prosecutors’ evidence was merely circumstantial.
Attorney Michael Martin, representing Amirov, said his client had insisted for the 25 months since his January 2023 arrest that he was not guilty.
He promised to discredit the testimony of Mahdiyev, calling him a “murderer, a kidnapper, an arsonist, a robber, an extortionist, a scammer, a fraudster and a liar.”
“That,” he added, “will be undisputed.”
Attorney Michael Perkins, representing Omarov, called his client a “scam artist” who had conned the Iranian government out of a lot of money.
“To earn that money, he did as close to nothing as possible,” Perkins said. “Mr. Omarov had no intention, no agreement, with anyone to kill Ms. Alinejad.”
Gutwillig said the government of Iran had long attacked Alinejad, smearing her reputation, imprisoning her brother and trying to kidnap her and bring her back to Iran in 2020. He said Iranian officials then agreed to the $500,000 assassination plot with the two men who wanted to make money and enhance their positions in their organized crime group.
“The defendants were hired guns for the government of Iran,” he said.
He said Alinejad became a target of Iran after encouraging women in Iran to share messages and videos of women protesting the regime by refusing to wear head coverings, or hijabs, in public in Iran, subjecting them to arrest or beatings by the country’s morality police.
“She shared them with millions. She shined a light on the government of Iran’s oppression of women, and that enraged the regime” Gutwillig said.
