NEW HAVEN, CT — The Board of Alders voted Monday, Oct. 5, to let the city borrow up to $27 million for its share of what it agreed to pay Vernon Horn and Marquis Jackson, who each spent close to 20 years in prison for a 1999 killing they did not commit, the New Haven Independent reported.
The vote at City Hall was 25-0, with one abstention, and no one spoke against the bonds. Finance Committee Chair Adam Marchand, the Westville alder, told the board before the vote: "Committee members agreed that the city had a legal and moral obligation to meet its commitments to these settlement agreements."
What the city owes
Less than two months ago, the Elicker administration agreed to pay each man $15.25 million, $30.5 million in all, to settle the federal lawsuits they filed in 2018. Both cases were weeks from trial. Insurance covers $5 million, so the city's share is $25.5 million. In a cover letter, City Controller Michael Gormany wrote that the city asked for up to $27 million in case it sells the bonds straight to a bank and has to pay the issuance costs out of the principal.
The city's first proposal estimated the cost at about $40.5 million over 20 years, roughly $13.5 million of it interest. That figure is not final. The city's Bond Sale Committee still has to approve the terms, including the interest rate. "Of course, we would love to see something more affordable for the city than that," Marchand told the Independent after the vote.
He said the Finance Committee looked at other ways to pay, among them a special tax levy, which carried its own worries for residents.
The convictions
Horn and Jackson were convicted in the deadly 1999 robbery of a Dixwell deli. Horn served 17 years and Jackson 19. A reinvestigation freed both men in 2018 after nearly 140 pages of phone records turned up at the home of a retired assistant chief of police, who had been one of the detectives on the case, the Independent reported. The records undercut the state's evidence and had never been given to the men's lawyers.