I got called for jury duty a couple of years ago and was waiting in line to get in the courthouse with a lot of real dregs. I figured "Wow, lot's of nasty looking defendants today."
Turned out they were just ALL the other good citizens of Windham County that had also got called for jury duty
As it turned out, we were impaneled for a huge murder trial that was BIG NEWS here a few years ago. After three or four years, it had finally come to trial. I would not have minded sitting on the jury BUT during the voir diere, they introduce all the state and local police who will testify, all the prosecutors and defense attorneys, etc. AND ask you if you had heard of the story in the news media.
Well in this case you'd have to live under a rock to NOT have heard about the famous Jose Torres murder trial and I knew most of the attorneys, half of the policemen and most of the prosecutors :0 Windham County is only 100,000 people and I've lived here all my life so it's no wonder I knew the cast of characters.
They let me go home
Here's the article from the Norwich Bulletin about the outcome of the trial:
Tuesday, March 5, 2002
Torres guilty in slaying
The mother of the 11-year-old victim cries with joy at Torres' conviction.
By DEBORAH A. MCLEOD
Special to the Bulletin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DANIELSON -- It took three and a half years to bring Jose Torres to trial for the vicious murder of an 11-year-old papergirl.
But it took a jury only three and half hours of deliberations to convict the 29-year-old Willimantic man of murder and capital felony in connection with Angelica Padilla's death.
"I thanked the jury because my daughter's life was in their hands," Padilla's mother, Milagros Cuevas, said. "We're going over to her memorial today and tell her we won."
A memorial sits in Alex Caisse Park in Willimantic off Route 195, near where the girl's body was found in 1998.
"I can't believe it. After three and a half years, we finally won," Cuevas said. "When the handcuffs were slapped on him, that was the best."
After going into deliberations late Friday, the jury returned Monday morning at 10:35 a.m. The verdict was announced shortly thereafter.
Torres will be sentenced Monday in Danielson Superior Court.
He likely will get life in prison, as the state did not seek the death penalty in the case. Capital felony calls for either death or life in prison.
Cuevas sobbed as the jury foreman read aloud the verdicts on both counts.
Torres, who had been a neighbor of Padilla and Cuevas, was expressionless -- as he has been throughout the month-long trial -- while handcuffs were placed on his wrists.
While Torres was led away in chains, Cuevas hugged Windham County State's Attorney Patricia Froelich and thanked her as they both cried.
The trial and verdict capped years of waiting and investigation by Padilla's family, police and the state's attorney's office.
Padilla was murdered Aug. 13, 1998, while delivering newspapers in a Foster Drive apartment complex in Willimantic, where she and Torres both lived.
Her body was found at 12:34 a.m. the next morning, when it was discovered she had been bludgeoned and her throat slit. Torres was arrested 13 days later and has maintained his innocence ever since.
After the verdict, Cuevas thanked the state's attorney's office, the Willimantic and state police officers involved in the case and the jury.
Cuevas' family and friends, including her husband, Luis -- by her side every day of the trial -- cried and hugged each other.
"We expected and hoped for this verdict," Linda Ubarry, Cuevas' sister, said. "Now we are just going to continue to stand together as a family like we always have before, during and after."
Froelich took over as lead prosecutor last July, when former State's Attorney Mark Solak was not reappointed.
Although Froelich rescinded the state's intention to seek the death penalty, Torres still faces life imprisonment without parole.
Froelich said DNA evidence extracted from a small spot of semen on Padilla's shorts and matched to Torres within a 1 in 300 million certainty, was the most damning evidence in the largely circumstantial case.
"The DNA was very strong evidence," Froelich said. "In fact it couldn't have been any stronger. We were assured a conviction because who else could it have been? It feels exhilarating that justice has prevailed."
In 1998, when the murder occurred, the DNA testing technology that was available could not conclusively match Torres to the semen.
But recent changes in mitochondrial and nuclear DNA testing, which test different parts of a DNA molecule, have made it possible to test much smaller and more contaminated samples.
The tests, done by the FBI and the Connecticut State Crime Lab, were found to include Torres as a contributor in every marker tested.
In addition to the DNA, fiber evidence against Torres was found to be consistent, but could not be perfectly matched because fiber testing can only include or exclude similarities.
