Jury slow to fill in triple murder trial
Griswold case shows challenges system is facing with potential new COVID-19 restrictions ahead
One of Connecticut’s most high-profile murder cases is slowly winding its way toward an in-person trial later this year in New London, but the court has filled only a third of the jury box after three full weeks of selection this summer, highlighting how much slower and more tedious some court proceedings have been through much of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sergio Correa of Hartford was charged with the grisly murders of three members of the Lindquist family in a 2017 robbery at their Griswold home and was set to go to trial in the spring of 2020, only to have his case delayed indefinitely when the pandemic forced much of society — including criminal trials — to shut down in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.
The case finally resumed this summer when top court officials greenlit judges to begin hosting in-person trials in June, after several failed attempts by Correa’s attorneys to force his trial to start earlier, but the typically dayslong jury selection process already has dragged out over three weeks with more weeks still to come under the threat of new COVID-19 restrictions amid surging cases of the delta variant.
After four more days of selection last week, attorneys in the case have picked just seven of the 12 jurors and six alternates necessary to hold the trial as scheduled in November.
The practical limitations of how many people can safely be in court in person amid the ongoing pandemic — and the new looming threat of the delta variant — plus the high-profile nature of the brutal case have combined for a one-two punch that has dramatically slowed the process of seating a jury both willing and able to sit
for a trial that could last up to six weeks.
Of the 40 jurors summoned to the Superior Court in New London on Wednesday, only 20 showed up and 12 of those people were excused by Judge Hunchu Kwak for undue hardship. The eight who ultimately did appear poised to participate in jury selection were all excused in the middle of the day, however, after it was discovered one of the would-be jurors had searched online about the case while waiting for selection to begin and discussed parts of the case with some of the group.
The court sat no new jurors Wednesday and the frustration showed on the faces of Kwak and all the attorneys in the courtroom.
“I have mixed feelings, because on the one hand we all really want to get on with this case,” said Joe Lopez, one of Correa’s public defenders, as all sides agreed to excuse the entire panel that afternoon.
“As does the court,” Kwak added.
“It’s been slow moving, but we have five people (so far), so that’s heartening . ... I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm but, boy, was that a bad move,” Lopez said.
Two more jurors were picked Thursday, but the court canceled Friday’s jury selection and will not return until Aug. 24 to resume the process.
The case against Correa is one of the most notorious murder cases in the state to be delayed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it will not be the first trial since those in-person proceedings were allowed to resume this summer.
Several in-person jury trials have been conducted in New Haven, and a jury returned a verdict in Bridgeport on Friday in the case against Brandyn Grant-ford, who was found not guilty of murder in the fatal shooting of Andre Pettway in May 2017.
That was one of about 145 cases on the trial list in the Fairfield Judicial District this summer, which is about as many as were usually on the list before the COVID-19 pandemic, said Robert Satti Jr., the supervisory assistant state’s attorney for the judicial district.
But while other bench trials and civil proceedings also have begun across the state, a backlog of criminal trials continues to grow in other districts with each passing month that courts are not operating at full speed.
In Hartford, the number of cases on the trial list have doubled since the beginning of the pandemic to more than 100, said Vicki Melchiorre, the supervisory assistant state’s attorney for the district who tried one in-person case before a judge but no jury earlier this summer. The district picked one jury of six and two alternates this summer, but that case was ultimately settled just before the trial began, so there has yet to be any jury trial in Hartford so far as the trial list grows month by month, she said.
“I think Connecticut is in better shape than some states, but that is a big backlog and it’s going to take a long time to get caught up. ... There’s a lot of work waiting to be processed,” Melchiorre said.
Even in New London the trial list grew again last week when Christopher Petteway, who is accused of murdering Robert Parise in 2018, refused a plea agreement and demanded a trial to the surprise of Parise’s family and Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Stephen Carney. That decision came Wednesday morning, and Carney described the next steps to schedule that case with the family outside one courtroom before stepping into the next courtroom over to begin the jury selection process that ended with no new jurors an hour later.
Other high-profile cases are not yet scheduled and may not begin until next year, including the much-anticipated conspiracy cases against Fotis Dulos’ former girlfriend Michelle
Troconis and friend Kent Mawhinney in the death of Dulos’ wife Jennifer Farber Dulos, and the murder trial against Richard Dabate, who is accused of killing his wife, Connie Dabate. The Dabate trial had been scheduled to begin in early March 2020 when the first COVID-19 cases appeared in Connecticut after the late defense attorney Hubert J. Santos presciently warned the court the emerging virus would severely impact the courts’ ability to hold trials.
Exactly how the surging delta variant of the coronavirus will impact judicial proceedings going forward remains to be seen.
State and local officials already are considering reinstating some early pandemic restrictions, including New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker’s announcement Friday that the Elm City will once again require facemasks indoors starting Monday. But Judge Patrick Carroll, the chief court administrator, has not yet announced any specific plans for how a continued increase in cases could impact courts as judges across the state prepare to begin their new annual assignments after Labor Day.
“The Judicial Branch operations will continue to be guided by the recommendations of public health officials, including the DPH and the CDC, and we are closely monitoring the situation on a day-by-day basis,” judicial branch spokeswoman Rhonda Stearley-hebert said in a statement. “As has been the case since the earliest days of the pandemic, our priority will be the health and safety of our staff, judges and stakeholders as we continue to discharge our constitutional and statutory responsibilities.”