Norwich killer seeks third trial in Chadwick murder case

The lawyer for a 47-year-old man twice convicted of stabbing a Norwich woman to death has filed a motion for yet another trial for his client, pushing off any sentencing date in the case for at least two months.

Attorney Sebastian DeSantis filed the new trial document on Aug. 2 in the same New London Superior Court where separate juries – one in 2016 and another in June – found Jean Jacques guilty of murdering 25-year-old Casey Chadwick inside her Spaulding Street apartment in 2015.

A second trial for Jacques became necessary after the state Supreme Court in 2019 ruled a Norwich police search of Jacques’ Crossways Street apartment that turned up Chadwick’s cellphone and drugs taken from her apartment was not legal and any evidence seized was ordered suppressed.

Since the fruits of that search were presented to jurors at Jacques’ first trial by prosecutors as evidence of his guilt, the high court’s decision overturned the 2016 murder conviction and rendered moot a subsequent 60-year prison sentence.

In his motion brief, DeSantis argues Judge Shari Murphy, who presided over Jacques’ second trial, failed to set a “fair standard” on how to deal with the previously suppressed evidence.

“In fact, there was hardly any standard set forth,” DeSantis wrote, alleging Murphy’s inaction deprived his client of his federal and state constitutional rights to a fair trial.

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Counterintuitively, DeSantis said the suppressing of the evidence that helped convict his client the first time made mounting a fresh defense challenging. He said Murphy warned him that any “opening the door” of certain topics during his cross-examination of state witnesses ran the risk of letting that evidence come before jurors.

“The standard was inconsistent making a cross-examination or setting up a defense nearly impossible,” DeSantis wrote. “If that evidence were to come in it would completely change the angle of the defense or make a defense impossible.”

Both the state, represented by Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Christa Baker and Assistant State’s Attorney Marissa Goldberg, and DeSantis navigated gingerly around the suppressed search evidence during the 10-day trial.

Jurors were frequently ushered out of the court during the most recent trial to allow DeSantis, prosecutors and Murphy to discuss any lines of potential questioning that might stray too close to the suppressed issues.

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Prosecutors said Jacques killed Chadwick in a fit of rage and stole cocaine and marijuana stored at her residence by her boyfriend, Jean Joseph – the same man who discovered Chadwick’s bloodied body stuffed into a closet on June 15, 2015.

A medical examiner testified Casey suffered more than a dozen stab and cutting wounds to her body during the attack that killed her.

Police witnesses testified Jacques in the days before Chadwick’s murder was a drug dealer with no product to sell, but was suddenly in a position to sell cocaine just hours after the murder. Jacques’ blood was found inside Chadwick’s apartment and her blood was detected on his clothes and inside his residence.

Two confidential jail informants testified Jacques confessed to killing a woman, with one providing details – including a general time of death – only known to the killer.

During his closing arguments, DeSantis intimated it was Chadwick’s boyfriend and not his client who committed the murder.

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Murphy will hear arguments on DeSantis’ new trial motion on Oct. 6. Jacques, who is being held on a $1 million bond at Suffield’s MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, was initially set to be sentenced on Aug. 17, but that date has been scrapped.

Chadwick’s mother, Wendy Hartling, who was preparing to read her victim’s impact statement in court this month, said she was told by court officials that the newly filed motion means Jacques' sentencing date will be postponed.

“I thought it was done,” she said on Wednesday during a phone interview. “I’m tired of going to Casey’s grave and telling her ‘you have justice.’ Now I have to wait until whenever the hell to tell her."

John Penney can be reached at jpenney@norwichbulletin.com or at (860) 857-6965.

This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Jean Jacques, convicted twice of murdering Norwich woman, seeks new trial