The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Moreno wants new trial in son’s death
Claims rights were violated after he dropped baby off bridge
HARTFORD — Tony Moreno’s defense attorney argued to the state Supreme Court on Thursday that a Middletown judge incorrectly denied his motion to suppress a letter related to the murder of Moreno’s infant son in 2015, saying authorities violated state criminal procedure.
The Middletown father, who is now serving a 70-year prison sentence for killing his son, Aaden Moreno, in July 2015 by dropping the child off a 100foot bridge, claims in his appeal to the state high court that his Miranda rights were violated during police questioning because it was involuntary and not valid.
He is represented by New Havenbased attorney Norm Pattis.
Senior assistant state’s attorney Robert J. Scheinblum said outside the courtroom that his brief contends “one, his (Moreno’s) statements at the hospital to Middletown police were voluntary as a matter of federal due process; two, the police were not required to record their interrogation of the defendant; the third was the defendant isn’t entitled to offer an agreement to plead guilty.”
During the trial, Pattis didn’t dispute his client killed the baby. He sought a lesser charge of manslaughter in the case.
“Tony Moreno was legally responsible for the death of his son, but was no murderer — that’s the bottom line,” Pattis said after court convened Thursday.
“Hopefully, they make a decision that will result in a new trial. There will be a written decision,” he said.
The court will also determine whether the court infringed on Moreno’s right to present a defense under the Sixth Amendment by excluding from evidence the letter he wrote to the prosecutor. In it, Moreno offered to plead guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a 25-year sentence, according to court documents.
Pattis claims the letter was “relevant to determining his mental state at the time of the child’s death,” which, he argues, “was integral to his defense that he unintentionally dropped the child from the bridge,” according to the appeal.
“This was a most difficult case and all the facts speak for themselves. It’s a case that had to be tried, not a case we wanted to be tried. We ask the court to treat that letter as judicial admission, not as hearsay,” Pattis said.
He then argued that, while at Hartford Hospital’s intensive care unit, Moreno “was pretty banged up,” and in pain and fentanyl was being given to him on a regular basis. “It appears to me Mr. Moreno was not in a condition to make a major decision,” Pattis said.
Scheinblum contends the trial court properly disallowed the letter as irrelevant.
“Here, both the letter itself as well as the defendant’s proffered testimony regarding his offer to plead guilty to manslaughter were irrelevant to the only contested issue at trial: whether the defendant intended to kill his son by throwing him off the Arrigoni Bridge or, instead, whether he dropped the baby off the bridge by accident,” according to his brief.
Also, he contends, the court properly disallowed the letter as “self-serving, inadmissible hearsay.”
He argued any error prohibiting the letter from being admitted into evidence was unintentional. “The state’s case against the defendant was so overwhelming that there is not doubt that he would have been convicted even if the court had admitted the letter,” Scheinblum wrote.
Also, Moreno was allowed to present his defense, he wrote, “by testifying that, although he was reckless or negligent and therefore criminally responsible for his son’s death, he was not guilty of murder.”
Moreno was convicted Feb. 22, 2017, and sentenced to 60 years on a murder charge and an additional 10 years for risk of injury to a minor. During sentencing, Middletown Superior Court Judge Elpedio N. Vitale issued a restraining order through Jan. 1, 2097, preventing Moreno from contacting or harassing the child’s mother.
It took the jury less than four hours to reach a verdict.
“Not only did you violently and intentionally kill your 7-month-old son, but you taunted his mother as you committed the act with text messages that were aptly described as demonic — just so you could add to her unfathomable grief,” Vitale said during the trial.
Kayakers discovered the boy’s body two days after he was drooped from the bridge, in the river 14 miles away, near the East Haddam Swing Bridge.
During the five-day murder trial, the court heard heart-wrenching statements from Aaden Moreno’s family.
Moreno was convicted of killing his son in retaliation for the boy’s mother ending their relationship.