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| Conn. Inmate Granted A New Trial |
| By The Hartford Courant |
| Published: 09/10/2001 |
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A Connecticut judge has granted a convicted rapist a new trial because the defendant's lawyer was so ineffective. LeRoy Rowley, 35, of Bridgeport - who has served more than four years in prison - will be tried again, following the ruling by Judge Robert Berdon. Berdon, a former state Supreme Court justice, is serving as a trial referee after nine years on the state's highest court. While cases are normally overturned on a direct appeal, Rowley took the more unusual route of requesting a civil, separate proceeding to prove that his lawyer had performed poorly. Seifert served as an expert witness at the proceeding, known as a habeas corpus hearing, after saying that Rowley had no grounds for a traditional appeal in the criminal courts. Known for his stinging and outspoken dissents on the Supreme Court, Berdon said the prosecution's case against Rowley 'was paper thin'' and noted that Rowley is a black man who was convicted of raping a white woman 'by an all-white jury.'' Berdon agreed with Rowley's claim that the public defender in the case, David Abbamonte, 'did not conduct an adequate investigation into the facts and failed to call a vital witness'' who might have exonerated Rowley. The attorney's failure to call the witness at trial 'renders the conviction of sexual assault unreliable,'' Berdon wrote in a 12-page ruling at Superior Court in New Haven. The case began in May 1992 when a woman said she wasraped at a three-family house in Bridgeport. Rowley wasarrested nearly a year later, and he was convicted by a jury of first-degree sexual assault. He was sentenced in 1997 toserve 10 years in prison, and he is still being held at theEnfield Correctional Institution as the case is being appealed, officials said. 'With respect to trial counsel, his lack of enthusiastic representation was clearly demonstrated,'' Berdon wrote. 'Henever interviewed the petitioner privately in jail, and his only pretrial communications were in the bullpen in the courthouse, where the attorney-client conversations could be overheard by others. He never discussed a defense with the petitioner until [the victim] finished testifying.'' |
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