News Coverage

The state’s highest court will hear arguments on Thursday about whether a Middletown man convicted last year of throwing his 7-month-old son off a bridge knowingly waived his Miranda rights while he was on suicide watch at Hartford Hospital.
Tony Moreno, 24, was sentenced in May to 70 years in prison for throwing his infant son, Aaden, off the Arrigoni Bridge before attempting suicide on July 5, 2015. He was convicted of murder and risk of injury to a child and is not eligible for...

A Connecticut man convicted of threatening the judge in his divorce case is arguing free speech rights in taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Edward Taupier of Cromwell has filed documents asking the court to hear his appeal of a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling in September that rejected his free speech arguments.
Taupier is serving an 18-month prison sentence for threatening Judge Elizabeth Bozzuto. Prosecutors said Taupier sent an email to six acquaintances in 2014 that...

Police in Washington, D.C., have closed their investigation into an allegation that suspended Yale student Saifullah Khan sexually assaulted two people, and authorities will not pursue charges against him, Khan’s attorney said Wednesday.
After receiving the news, Khan quickly wrote a letter to Yale College Dean Marvin Chun, asking him to lift the “emergency suspension” the university imposed against him when the allegations were published in the Yale Daily...

Saifullah Khan — the Yale student who was suspended in October in response to new allegations of sexual assault against him— will not return to campus this semester, as his legal battle to return to Yale has been postponed until January.
Khan, who was acquitted on four counts of sexual assault in March, was suspended on Oct. 7 — two days after the News published allegations of sexual misconduct levied against him by Jon Andrews, a former confidant of Khan’s. Three...

"This is a shocking case. This is a case that calls for jury nullification."
Many have had similar reactions when confronting cases involving authorities running roughshod over people with bad laws, punitive sentences, and ill-considered prosecutions. But this time, the person invoking jury nullification was a federal judge—District Judge Stefan R. Underhill of the District of Connecticut—and he spoke in court about a case over which he presided.
The prosecution that...

The city rarely gets to host an honest-to-goodness Russian oligarch.
But there Shalva Chigirinsky was, pacing the fifth floor of the Fairfield County Courthouse on Tuesday in an impeccably tailored suit, amidst the poor and disenfranchised.
The 67-year-old Chigirinsky was once considered one of Russia’s richest men, with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $1.6 billion. But that was before his divorce in 2009 from Tatiana Panchenkova, a willowy blond and daughter of a former...

A Yale student who was acquitted earlier this year of sexually assaulting a female student reportedly has been suspended by university officials in the wake of allegations by a former male friend of his that he sexually assaulted him.
Saifullah Khan was notified several days ago by Yale College Dean Marvin M. Chun that he was suspended immediately from Yale College because of an “emergency,” according to the Hartford Courant.
The letter by Chun to Khan reportedly said...

A Yale student has asked a Superior Court judge to lift a suspension imposed by the university on Sunday after the Yale Daily News reported sexual assault allegations against him.
Saifullah Khan filed papers Wednesday asking the New Haven Superior Court to permit him to return to classes and to order the university to provide him with an escort or bodyguard to protect him from other students and faculty members.
On Wednesday, a Superior Court judge said a decision could not be made...

A local nurse, convicted last year after a third trial of killing a 20-year-old college student and scattering her body parts in Trumbull, is now being represented by his fourth lawyer.
Attorney Norman Pattis filed paperwork in Superior Court here to represent Jermain Richards in his appeal on Wednesday.
“I think he has excellent prospects on appeal,” Pattis said as he left the Fairfield County Courthouse.
Richards, a private-duty nurse, was found guilty of murder...

Embattled New Haven police Lt. Ray Tennant went from the hospital psychiatric ward Tuesday directly to court to face charges of beating his wife. He's also accused of holding his wife and their children hostage in their Tolli Terrace home for eight days.
A prosecutor read a list of allegations to the judge, including claims he "assaulted his wife with a Lysol can causing her a swollen right eye."
The ordeal prompted a SWAT standoff his high profile lawyer, Norm Pattis, called...