CT Man Cleared of Murder After Three Decades of Witness Lies, Years in Prison

Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant, Feb. 1, 2024

One of the state’s most bewildering cases of wrongful conviction finally ended Thursday when a Superior Court judge dismissed murder, robbery, and conspiracy convictions against George Gould for killing a bodega owner 30 years ago….

As the case crawled from trial through decades of appeals, each more confused than the last by successive recantations, Gould was imprisoned, released, returned to prison and finally freed.

Codefendant Ronald Taylor, who Gould met the night before the murder, had been released earlier so he could die of cancer at home with his family in 2011.

“George’s mother had always hoped that he would be released from prison while she was still alive and her wish was realized,” said attorney Richard Emanuel, whose work with colleague Joette Katz succeeded in winning dismissal of the case….

Over the next quarter century, Gould and Taylor — until his death in 2011 — experienced a series of heart-stopping legal wins and losses, all based on the state’s vacillating star witness. Gould was freed in 2010 by a judge who decided he was innocent, but imprisoned again a year later when the Supreme Court disagreed. He was freed for good in 2021 when Harmon reduced his sentence to time served and the ordeal approached a conclusion….

(Read the full article here: https://www.courant.com/2024/02/01/ct-man-cleared-of-murder-after-three-decades-of-witness-lies-years-in-prison.)