After more than 30 years, justice at last
Last June, the state Supreme Court unanimously reversed Judge Samuel Sferrazza, who rejected the habeas petitions for new trials of Ralph “Ricky” Birch and Shawn Henning, convicted of murdering Everett Carr in New Milford in 1985. Birch, 18 at the time of the crime, and Henning, 17, were convicted in 1989 and sentenced, respectively, to 55 years and 50 years. The court ordered new trials for both men.
In reversing the habeas judge, the Supreme Court concluded the men’s right to a fair trial was violated by the state’s failure to correct the trial testimony of Henry C. Lee, at the time the director of the State Police Forensic Science Laboratory. Lee, shown a photograph of two towels hanging near the sink of an upstairs bathroom in the home where Carr was murdered, said he did a field test on a smear on one of the towels that was “positive consistent with blood” and that it was “subsequently identified to be blood.” But two lab technicians testified at the habeas trial there were no records of either a field test or a subsequent lab test and that, when the smear was tested years later, it was found not to be blood.
Carr, 65, lived in his daughter’s home. Sometime in the late evening of Dec. 1, 1985, he was attacked — hit on the head seven times, stabbed 27 times, his throat cut. Despite the bloody crime scene, there was no trace evidence of the crime in the car the young men drove that evening or on their clothing. The state used the towel to support its theory that the reason why there was no trace evidence in the car was because they had cleaned up after the crime.
News coverage of the Supreme Court’s decision focused, perhaps understandably, on Lee’s testimony. But the more important fact was that there was, and has been from day one in 1985, no forensic evidence of any kind that linked the men to the crime, while there was, and has been from day one, strong evidence that pointed to others as the perpetrators. There were footprints of two people in the blood on the floor in the house, but the prints didn’t match the treads on the soles of Birch and Henning’s shoes and one set of prints was made by someone who, an FBI footwear specialist determined, had a shoe size of 7½ to 9. Henning and Birch wore shoes that were 10½ to 11½. A DNA profile was found at four locations at the crime scene, including on the inside of the front waistband of Carr’s underwear and on a piece of metal under his body that came from the knife used in the attack. But the DNA came from a woman.
Henning and Birch’s DNA was not found anywhere in the house. The only “evidence” linking them to the crime was statements of several individuals implicating them in the crime. A childhood friend of Henning testified he had said he was involved in a burglary during which a man was killed. Two men who had been incarcerated with Birch said he had said he and Henning killed a man while robbing a house in New Milford. But Henning’s friend and one of the jailhouse informants recanted their testimony at the habeas trial, and acquaintances of the other jailhouse informant testified he told them he had lied.
Last Friday in Torrington, after Litchfield State’s Attorney Dawn Gallo told Superior Court Judge Dan Shaban the state had decided not to retry Birch and Henning because the witnesses from the original trial had either died or recanted and there was no evidence linking them to the murder, the judge dismissed all charges against them. The state did the right thing in dropping the charges. But now it should try to answer the question it didn’t answer more than 30 years ago: Who killed Everett Carr?