State Supreme Court sides with Newton
Justices throw out 2015 conviction, order new trial in campaign finance case
BRIDGEPORT — Democrat Ernie Newton, whose long political career seemingly ended in 2005 with a corruption conviction while he was a state senator, has been on a winning streak for the last couple of years.
First, he was hired by local nonprofit Career Resources to help ex-offenders like himself find employment. Then, in November, voters returned Newton to the Bridgeport City Council, where he served in the 1980s before spending many years in the state Legislature.
Still, Newton has had a giant legal asterisk attached to his recent success. More specifically, a January 2015 conviction for campaign financing fraud and a related six-month prison sentence.
On Friday, Newton got another break, this time from the state Supreme Court. He has, for nearly four years, been allowed to remain free while appealing that 2015 case, and the justices, in a unanimous decision released Friday, ordered a new trial for Newton.
“I’m just grateful, man,” Newton said afterward. “I’ve been through a lot. Almost five years I’ve been going through this.”
Keeping the faith
He thanked his attorneys, his family, and his constituents, “who believed in me and allowed me to serve” again on Bridgeport’s legislative body despite his criminal past and pending legal issues.
And Newton thanked God.
“If it hadn’t been for my faith, I don’t know I could have done this. I don’t,” Newton said. “But because
of that, I was able to sustain.”
But he will need to keep that faith a little while longer. Newton, 62, still faces a possible retrial.
Newton’s current legal troubles originated with his failed attempt in 2012 to return to the state Legislature. Newton’s campaign at that time was collecting the small contributions needed for him to qualify for $80,550 from Connecticut’s so-called clean elections public campaign grants program.
He was accused of submitting five contribution cards of $100 a piece to meet the grant program’s threshold that were signed by five people who had not actually given that money.
As explained in Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, faced in 2012 with a $490 shortfall, Newton’s campaign suddenly received $500 and “either on his own or through the assistance of another, (Newton) had approached the five signors and instructed them to sign the ($100 contribution) cards (and) assured them that they would not be required to donate money to the campaign.”
Successful appeal
Newton, following a state investigation, was charged with five counts of illegal practices in campaign financing, two counts of first-degree larceny and one count of witness tampering.
On Jan. 16, 2015, a jury found Newton guilty of three of the charges and acquitted him of witness tampering. Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on the remaining charges.
Newton’s attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court and argued, according to the justices’ ruling, that the trial court “improperly failed to instruct the jury that, in order to find him guilty of an illegal campaign financing practice, it must find that he (Newton) acted with the specific intent to violate” campaign financing laws by making a payment to a campaign in another person’s name.
The Supreme Court concluded, “it was reasonably possible that the jury was misled ... and the defendant was entitled to a new trial.”
But will the state prosecute Newton all over again? His public defender, Mark Rademacher, said Friday, “This case is so old.”
“Are they going to go back, present the case and hope for a better result? That sounds foolish and a waste of time and money,” Rademacher said. “They had one good shot and didn’t convict him of all those felonies.”
Ralph Ford, a prominent Democratic leader in Bridgeport and in the East End that Newton represents on council, reiterated the complaint Newton and his supporters have made for years — that the campaign financing case should have been civil, not criminal.
The fact that the judge allowed Newton to go free rather than appeal his conviction from jail “speaks volumes about this case,” Rademacher said in a 2017 interview.
“And I think they targeted him specifically” because of Newton’ s prior corruption conviction while a state senator, Ford said Friday.
“If the state wants to waste more time and money trying to convict him, I think the results will be the same,” Ford said of a retrial.
It cannot hurt Newton that he has been acting the model citizen with his new job and political and community activities.
“Ernie’s one of my favorite clients because he’s such a never-give-up optimist,” Rademacher said. “He’s one of the (most) law-abiding clients I’ve ever had, and just a super nice guy.”
“If it hadn’t been for my faith, I don’t know I could have done this. I don’t. But because of that, I was able to sustain.”
Ernie Newton