An appellate court threw out Perez’s two convictions and ordered two new trials, but the state appealed.
It was the summer of 2007. Eddie Perez was still Hartford’s mayor, he was in his office faced with a state investigator, and he told that investigator that he had paid a city contractor for work done on his house when he hadn’t.
Now, eight years later, that lie and the effect it may have had on his trial are at center stage.
“When the court...granted the motion to consolidate, it should have changed the caption of the case. And the change should have been, ‘State of Connecticut versus Eddie ‘The Liar’ Perez,'" said Hubert Santos, Perez’s attorney, in oral arguments before the Connecticut Supreme Court. Perez is still fighting his 2010 convictions on bribery and extortion. And Santos’ point was clear: There were two cases against the former mayor -- one about bribery, the other about extortion -- and the court shouldn’t have combined them into one trial.
"What a jury had to say: well, is he telling the truth on case number one, when he said he lied, or is he telling the truth on case number two?" Santos said. "Each of them fed into each other to result in the jury concluding that Eddie Perez was a liar. And...no jury instruction was going to cure that...Juries are responsible. But once they got a picture of the mayor as a liar, that was the end of the trial."
An appellate court threw out Perez’s two convictions and ordered two new trials, but the state appealed. That’s the issue now.
During the argument, Justice Peter Zarella asked Santos whether combining the two cases was actually the less harmful choice.
“If the bribery case was tried first, and there was a conviction, why isn’t that more harmful in your second case than if they are tried together?" Zarella said.
Santos responded, "When you let the jury hear that the defendant is an admitted liar --"
"How about a convicted liar?" Zarella cut in.
"Well," Santos said. "Yes, that’s not good, either."
Harry Weller argued the case for the state, and he said the lie didn’t affect the jury’s deliberations.
"As far as Mr. Perez being a liar -- look, the defendant was convicted because there was overwhelming evidence of guilt," Weller said. "The fact that he was a liar didn’t even taint the bribery case."
That’s the case in which he was alleged to have fabricated a bill.
"If the jury was going to paint him with a broad brush and say, once a liar always a liar, they could have never acquitted him of fabricating evidence," Weller said. "That’s a crime of deception. That’s a crime of fraud… That’s a jury that did its job, and when you have a jury that did its job in such a manner, this court has no reason whatsoever to say that there’s a problem with his conviction."
Perez, who left office after his conviction, didn’t speak to reporters as he left the courthouse.
There's no timeline for the court to rule. If Perez wins, he could face two new trials; if he loses, he could face three years in prison.
