On the first day of fifth grade, Stefon Morant asked Kim to be his girlfriend. Nearly 30 years passed, and they drifted apart. Then, in 2007, Kim wrote Stefon a letter in prison. They wed two years later in a small room at the Cheshire Correctional Institution.  After 17 years of marriage, Kim took the stand in a Hartford federal courtroom Wednesday to support her husband’s wrongful-conviction claim against the City of New Haven. She told the bittersweet story of their love, describing how Stefon’s incarceration still shapes their lives together.  “We have a beautiful home. We can’t even enjoy it…because he carries this with him,” she said through sobs. “I want to know: when will this be over?” Stefon is pressing a wrongful-conviction lawsuit against the City of New Haven and six former police detectives. He alleges that he and Scott Lewis were framed by former Det. Vincent Raucci for the 1990 double homicide of former alderman Ricardo Turner and his partner, Lamont Fields.  Morant was convicted in 1994 and received a 70-year sentence. He was released on a sentence reduction in 2015 and later won a full pardon. He eventually received a $5.84 million wrongful-conviction award from the state. Morant’s ongoing civil-rights trial began three weeks ago before U.S. District Judge Sarala Nagala. The case is expected to go to the jury next week. Read more about the case… A 1998 New Haven Advocate expose The FBI’s report on Vincent Raucci The Independent’s coverage of Lewis’ habeas victory, his exit from prison, his lawsuit against the city, Morant’s sentence reduction, and their adjustments to freedom The National Exoneration Registry’s synthesis of Lewis and Morant‘s stories An update on Raucci’s life since he left the police force (he was not convicted for the charges described in this story) An overview of the 2026 trial Throughout the proceedings, Kim has watched from the back row. On Wednesday, when she was called to testify, she walked from her usual seat in tan platform wedges — her go-to court shoes. She told Amelia Greene, one of Morant’s attorneys, about her first encounter with Stefon in 1979. “I walk[ed] into the classroom, and this little cutie sits behind me and taps me on the shoulder,” said Kim. Stefon and his friends had been debating who would ask Kim to be their girlfriend. “He let them know — let me know, that I was gonna be his girlfriend.” Their fifth-grade romance did not last long. “I didn’t mind being Stefon’s girlfriend, but as he says, he was a ladies’ man,” she recalled. “But he also forgets that I was the girl that everyone wanted.” Kim married a different man and had three children with him. He died in 2005. Two years later, she decided to write a letter to Stefon in prison. Soon afterwards, she got a call from Stefon’s mother, Linda, who helped connect Stefon and Kim by phone. The next few months were filled with many more letters and phone calls. Kim was able to visit Stefon for the first time in 2008. When Stefon walked into the room, “it blew my mind,” she said. “I was in shock to see that this man that was in prison for all these years looked and appeared to be the way that he was.” What most moved her about Stefon was his faith. Men in prison often explore religion without truly becoming faithful, she said. “But there was something different about the way Stefon presented [his faith] to me.” She also loved seeing Stefon develop close connections with her three children, which they “needed” after their father’s passing. Stefon is their stepfather, she said, and “that man stepped up.” She broke into sobs describing how her second daughter “just opened her heart to Stefon.” In 2009, Kim and Stefon married in a small room at the Cheshire state prison. In the days before the ceremony, Kim was panicked because the package with their rings had been delayed. It was delivered the night before the wedding. “That was my sign that this was the man I was supposed to marry,” said Kim. Kim and Stefon were allowed to invite only two guests each. Kim gave her slots to Stefon so his brothers and mother could attend. They did not know it then, but it marked the last time the brothers would all be together. When Stefon took the stand in his own wrongful-conviction trial on Tuesday, he said he wore “the best prison suit that they gave me” when he got married at Cheshire. Stefon came home in 2015, but his release was “bittersweet,” said Kim. With a felony conviction on his record, “he wasn’t coming totally free.” The conviction was expunged in 2021. After he won the pardon, Kim remembered meeting Stefon outside of the courthouse — and how he “jumped with joy” and called out, “Jesus!” “I Have Never Felt So Ashamed To Be A Citizen Of New Haven” The wins have meant a lot to Stefon, but they have not given him back the 21 years that were taken. He “wears a mask” most of the time, said Kim. He is “very gentle” with his grandchildren, but he can be short with Kim and Linda. “We take the licks,” said Kim. “But he comes back, and realizes, and that’s what I love about him.” He also struggles with physical touch. He jumps when Kim touches him, as if she is “someone coming to invade his space.” They switched from a queen bed to two twins so he could sleep without being on edge.  On date nights, Stefon wants to visit ten different restaurants in an hour. When you spend 21 years with no control over your life, she said, deciding what to eat and where to spend your time becomes a hard question. What weighs on them the most, said Kim, is that Stefon sometimes forgets that he is no longer in prison. When he came home, she hoped that they would have a completely normal relationship. “But I think Stefon still lives with the rules” of prison, she said — including the one that prohibits touching in public. Greene asked Kim how the ongoing trial itself has affected Stefon. Kim’s answer came in bursts, as she struggled to form words through her sobs. “I have never felt so ashamed to be a citizen of New Haven,” she said. “This is eating Stefon alive, day and night — to hear and to feel people still don’t believe him.”  She spoke as a wife and as a mother about how Stefon’s conviction changed the lives of everyone around him. As a partner, Kim cannot “move forward until [Stefon] knows” that he has been heard. “I tell him, ‘You’re not gonna have to carry this on your name, because we know who you are.’” At this point, the audience in the courtroom began to pass around a tissue box. People took off their glasses and dabbed away their tears.  As a mother, Kim fears for her children. “If it could happen to Stefon, it could happen to any one of us.” She begs her kids to always tell her where they are, just in case something happens.  Then she turned to the jury box. “Can you imagine, just like that — you’re a young man, and your life changes, just like that?” James Tallberg, the attorney representing Raucci, objected. He said Kim’s answer exceeded the scope of Greene’s question. Kim apologized, clearly overwhelmed with emotion.  Greene ended with one final question: After everything — the decades of incarceration and endless legal battles — has Stefon ever given up? Kim did not hesitate. “I’ve never seen him, from the day I met him, give up,” she said. “He won’t quit. He won’t stop.” The post Decades Of Love, Decades In Prison appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less