FREEHOLD – A judge ruled Thursday that prosecutors blatantly violated court rules by deliberately withholding potentially exculpatory evidence during the recent trial of a mother and son charged with the murders of two relatives in Long Branch decades ago.
But Superior Court Judge Joseph W. Oxley said the violation fell short of warranting the dismissal of the case against Dolores Morgan and her son, Ted Connors, whose trial ended with a hung jury in October.
With the pair’s retrial scheduled to begin Feb. 14 in the murders in the mid-1990s of Morgan’s daughter and husband, Oxley said he will rule Friday on a request by prosecutors to postpone the second trial until March.
Attorneys for Morgan, 68, and Connors, 49, sought to have all charges against their clients dismissed as a penalty against prosecutors for keeping exculpatory evidence from them before and during the first trial.
Although Oxley said the prosecutors’ violation was blatant, he also said he had to weigh the burden it posed on the defense against the right of the public to have its day in court.
Morgan and Connors, both of Delray Beach, Florida, are both charged with the 1994 murder of Morgan’s daughter, Ana Mejia, 25, and the 1995 murder of Morgan’s husband, Nicholas Connors, 51, when the family lived in Long Branch.
The evidence withheld from defense attorneys during the first trial consisted of handwritten notes from 1995 indicating that the star prosecution witness confessed to an acquaintance that he killed Nicholas Connors.
But that star witness, Jose Carrero, testified at last year’s trial it was Ted Connors who fatally shot the victim, his adoptive father.
Defense attorneys Jason Seidman, representing Morgan, and Jonathan Petty, representing Ted Connors, argued last week that the handwritten notes of the acquaintance, Terrence Malave, were exculpatory and should have been turned over to them prior to the first trial. If those notes were revealed to the jury during the trial, they may have pushed the jury to acquit their clients, the defense attorneys argued.
The defense attorneys became aware of Malave’s handwritten notes during a sidebar at trial, while Malave was on the witness stand. Malave testified he gave two statements to police, including information about what Carrero told him about Nicholas Connors’ murder. But the defense attorneys said they only had one of Malave’s statements, concerning what he knew about the murder of Mejia, and they were unaware Malave had given police a second statement about Nicholas Connors’ death.
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With that, Meghan Doyle, assistant Monmouth County prosecutor, said during the sidebar that the second statement, which turned out to be the notes, was referenced in a police report, but since the defense attorneys didn’t have that statement, she wouldn’t question Malave about it.
It wasn’t until seven days later, after a mistrial had been declared, that Doyle and Noah Heck, another assistant prosecutor, turned over Malave’s handwritten notes to the defense attorneys, Oxley said. The notes were contained in the prosecution’s opposition brief to a motion to release Morgan and Connors from jail.
Malave’s notes said that Carrero told him he went into the Connors’ residence and shot Nicholas Connors several times before leaving the home, meeting Ted Connors outside and fleeing the scene.
At the trial, Carrero testified he waited outside the house while Ted Connors went inside and shot his adoptive father.
The judge said that according to court rules, it is the obligation of prosecutors to turn over evidence to defense attorneys that may be exculpatory or used to impeach the credibility of witnesses.
“The statement could have and unequivocally should have been disclosed before trial,” Oxley said of Malave’s handwritten notes. “Clearly everybody in this courtroom can agree that seven days post-trial is a blatant violation of this rule. The state clearly flouted the rule and exhibited the exact gamesmanship the rule was designed to prevent.
“The state deliberately and intentionally withheld the statement for an additional seven days after the state was made aware that it was not turned over to the defense,” the judge said. “In this court’s opinion, that is a blatant violation of the state’s obligation.”
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Mejia was found stabbed to death in her apartment on Dec. 9, 1994. Nicholas Connors was found shot to death in the Connors’ family home on May 14, 1995.
It wasn’t until January 2020 that Morgan, Ted Connors and Carrero, 50, of Jackson were charged in the killings.
Carrero testified last year that Morgan put him and her son up to the murders and that he helped Ted Connors carry them out. He testified that Morgan wanted her daughter dead to prevent her from talking to police about the family’s cocaine dealing, and she wanted her husband killed so that she could collect on his life-insurance policy. His cross-examination revealed numerous inconsistencies between what he testified to and what he told investigators when he was arrested.
Morgan and Connors had been held in the Monmouth County Jail without bail until last week, when their attorneys finally secured their release. Oxley cited Carrero’s questionable credibility in his order to release them, an ordered that had first been subjected to a number of appeals.
Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues, unsolved mysteries and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Judge: State blatantly withheld evidence in Long Branch murder trial