A federal judge has temporarily paused a $38 million judgment recently awarded to Stefon Morant — as the City of New Haven and two former detectives seek new trials in the wrongful-conviction case. Morant, meanwhile, has asked prosecutors to bring new criminal charges — for witness tampering and perjury — against Vincent Raucci, the detective who allegedly took the lead in framing Morant for a 1990 double homicide. Those post-trial proceedings are part of the federal case Stefon Morant v. City of New Haven, a wrongful-conviction claim first filed in 2022. Following a month-long trial in Hartford, on May 29, a federal jury awarded Morant $38 million and found the City of New Haven, Raucci, and former Det. Vincent Maher liable under federal law for the misconduct that sent Morant to prison for 21 years. Click here to read the judgment in full. 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 Both former drug dealers, Morant and Scott Lewis were accused of killing former alder Ricardo Turner and his partner, Lamont Fields, in their Howard Avenue apartment on Oct. 11, 1990. Morant and Lewis have long argued that Raucci framed them for the murders because Lewis owed a debt to Raucci’s alleged business partner, notorious drug kingpin Frank Parise. In 1994, Morant was convicted of the murders and sentenced to 70 years in prison. He was released in 2015 on a sentence modification and eventually received an absolute pardon. He later received $5.84 million in a wrongful-conviction award from the state. Nearly a decade ago, his alleged co-conspirator, Scott Lewis, reached a $9.5 million settlement with the City of New Haven, then led by Mayor Toni Harp. Elicker: “New Haven Taxpayers Should Not Be Inappropriately Punished By Excessive Jury Awards” The three liable defendants in Morant’s recently concluded civil-rights trial — the City of New Haven, Raucci, and Maher — filed for new trials and requested stays of execution on Friday, June 26. (Hearst CT’s Nathaniel Rosenberg first reported on the filings.) Three days later — on Monday, June 29 — U.S. Judge Sarala Nagala ordered that the judgment be paused. According to court filings, the plaintiff’s attorneys agreed to the stay. “The final judgment in this action … shall be temporarily stayed pending resolution of any appeal of said judgment,” Nagala wrote. In a comment provided to the Independent on Tuesday, Mayor Justin Elicker described any wrongful conviction as a “miscarriage of justice that needs to be rectified.” (The lawyer hired by the Elicker administration offered an opposite take during this trial: the lawyer, Thomas Gerarde, argued in court that “nothing improper happened” in the police’s handling of Morant’s case, defended Raucci’s techniques of stopping and restarting a tape to have an alleged witness change his story, and argued that Morant in fact committed the murder.) At the same time, Elicker said, the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) had policies that prohibited the “illegal” actions of Raucci and Maher. Elicker also said that the State of Connecticut “was the entity responsible for Mr. Morant’s criminal prosecution, defended his conviction, and fought his efforts to be released for years.” Even so, the jury assessed far higher damages against the city compared to the state’s $5.8 million wrongful-conviction award, he said. “Simply put, the appropriate individuals should be held accountable for any wrongful conviction and New Haven taxpayers should not be inappropriately punished by excessive jury awards,” the mayor concluded. “Attorney Brustin’s Comments Were Intended To Inflame The Jury’s Passions” In his recent motion for a new trial, Gerarde, the city’s attorney in this case, argued that the evidence against Raucci biased the jury against the city. By trying all of the defendants together, the court “ignored the risk of prejudice to the City from being tainted by evidence of Raucci’s bad character,” he wrote. The plaintiffs “built [their] case against the City around the inference that someone so corrupt — a drug dealer who would frame innocent men as retribution for one of them leaving the drug trade — could only serve in a police department that was equally corrupt.” In a separate filing, Raucci’s attorney, James Tallberg, pointed the finger back at the city. “The most significant prejudice came from the admission of the mountain of Monell evidence involving other NHPD investigations, other detectives, and other alleged misconduct,” he wrote. Because the allegations against Raucci were “inferential,” he argued, the jury may have used evidence against the city to fill in gaps when rendering a verdict against Raucci. Other “prejudicial” evidence introduced by the plaintiffs include testimony about “speculated on-the-job drug use, an unrelated consensual intimate relationship arising from a separate police matter, and an anecdote by a former detective about an alleged attempt by Mr. Raucci to plant cocaine on a suspect during an unrelated motor vehicle stop,” wrote Tallberg. By introducing that evidence, the plaintiffs “invited character-based reasoning,” leading the jury to use Raucci’s apparent “propensity for misconduct” as evidence of his liability. Tallberg also noted that the defense counsel had been barred from questioning Morant and Lewis about their drug and alcohol use in the 1990s. In addition to arguing that Raucci tainted the trial, Gerarde said Nick Brustin, one of Morant’s attorneys, biased the jury by appealing to their emotions. “[T]here can be little doubt that Attorney Brustin’s comments were intended to inflame the jury’s passions — both sympathy for plaintiff and antipathy toward defendants,” wrote Gerarde. He pointed to Brustin’s closing remarks, when he encouraged the jury to “let anger guide its deliberations” and “send a message to the City through its verdict.” The jury’s “astronomical award” is evidence that they were influenced by their emotions, said Gerarde. In other wrongful-conviction cases, defendants are routinely awarded between $500,000 and $1 million per year of incarceration, wrote Gerarde. “[T]o avoid a double recovery,” Connecticut statute also requires the state’s award of $5.8 million to be offset from damages against the city. Therefore, he argued, overall damages should be no higher than $16 million. Tallberg, meanwhile, proposed a maximum award of $10 million. “There was absolutely nothing inappropriate about our argument to the jury. Our argument was based solely on the evidence, and in rebuttal to the offensive arguments made by the Defendants,” Brustin, Morant’s attorney, told the Independent. “In general, the City’s recent filings have no merit. We are confident there is no basis to disturb the verdict, which is entirely proper.” If the court denies the defendants’ request for a new trial, they are asking the court to reduce the damages award. (If the plaintiffs refuse the reduced amount, the case would return to trial.) Raucci May Face Criminal Charges In a separate June 26 motion, Morant’s attorneys urged prosecutors to investigate Raucci for witness tampering and perjury. During the trial, Raucci’s ex-wife, Donna Desai, testified that her son received a Facebook message threatening to burn her house down if she talked about Raucci’s alleged drug use. When asked about the message, Raucci pled the Fifth, which protects against self-incrimination. At the time, the court deferred considering a criminal referral; in her filing, Attorney Anna Benvenutti Hoffman requested that the court now ask the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate Raucci. She also noted multiple instances of potential perjury, saying that Raucci “provided a number of brand new explanations at trial on subjects regarding which he had previously testified repeatedly under oath.” Tallberg declined to comment for this story. The post Judge Pauses Morant’s $38M Award; City Seeks New Trial appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less