Judge drops drug case on witness credibility

[flashl]

08/13/2008
By LISA BACKUS , Herald staff

NEW BRITAIN - A New Britain Superior Court Judge acquitted a Walnut Street man of drug sale charges Tuesday after citing concerns that the state's lead witness was a delusional cocaine addict.

Judge Thomas V. O'Keefe dismissed the charges against Gnoa Trusty, 33, formerly of 10 Walnut St., just minutes before attorneys on both sides were to make their final arguments to the jury.

"We're talking about an eight-year mandatory sentence on the word of a paranoid schizophrenic," O'Keefe said as he granted Trusty's attorney's motion for acquittal. "Basically you have to accept the credibility of the informant for the state's case to be accepted. In this case, the informant's a severely depressed, anxious, paranoid schizophrenic who is heavily medicated and at one time had an imaginary dog named Barilla."

..

New Britain police used a confidential informant wearing a video recording device to make the buy - a tactic that Police Chief William Gagliardi said should have guaranteed a successful conviction.

"This turned out to be the prosecution of the confidential informant," Gagliardi said after hearing about the judge's ruling. "The fact that a video was used was inconsequential to the person carrying the camera."

[Vincardog]

1. IF they had tortured the info out of the severely depressed, anxious, paranoid schizophrenic who is

heavily medicated; they could have held him in GITMO forever.
On the infinite power of God's chosen (p)Resident inbreed idiot grandson of Hitler's Banker.

[Vincardog]

2. Agent Mike is screwing with my link. forgive the double post