The state Supreme Court has closed the door on a key route for James Hilton to challenge his decades-old murder conviction. The court issued that opinion on Tuesday in the case Hilton v. Commissioner of Correction, ruling against Hilton’s challenge to a lower court’s ruling on his habeas corpus lawsuit.

Background

Hilton was convicted of the July 14, 2000, murder of 19-year-old William Ariel Rodriguez near the intersection of Truman Street and King Place in the Hill. He maintained that he was present at the scene of the murder but innocent of the crime — that in fact, he tried to save Rodriguez’s life.

Two witnesses testified that they had seen Hilton shoot Rodriguez point-blank, right at Williams’ temple. Hilton’s lawyer, Alex Taubes, has questioned the consistency and reliability of those witnesses’ statements. A jury sided against Hilton in 2001. He was sentenced to 65 years in prison at the age of 33 — effectively a life sentence.

Appeal

Hilton had sought for the judicial system to take seriously a forensic pathologist whose analysis undercut the ballistic analysis behind the conviction — the late Cyril Wecht, known for publicly weighing in on high-profile murder cases, whom Hilton discovered while watching an episode of Dr. Phil in prison.

Wecht offered a differing opinion from the other pathologists who weighed in on the case, concluding that the gunshot wound “could not have been a tight contact wound,” that the bullet was “fired from a distance beyond twenty-four inches.” However, habeas judge Corinne Klatt decided that Wecht was “not credible,” writing that he “did not review all relevant evidence.” Klatt denied Hilton’s bid for a new trial.

In their case before the state Supreme Court, Taubes argued that Klatt used the wrong legal standard to assess the significance of Wecht’s forensic conclusions. He argued that the judge should not have simply been evaluating whether Wecht was credible — that she should have been considering whether a jury could have reasonably come to a different conclusion, given the totality of the evidence of the case.

The state Supreme Court’s ruling concluded by affirming the Appellate Court’s prior decision, stating that “the state’s evidence of guilt in the present case was not weak” in Hilton’s case.

Original reporting: New Haven Independent — read the source article.