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Former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez Gets Hearing Before State Supreme Court

Jeff Cohen
/
WNPR
Former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez at a rally earlier this year for current Mayor Pedro Segarra.

Former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez will have his corruption case heard by the state’s highest court Tuesday, as he continues to fight his 2010 convictions on bribery and extortion-related charges. 

The legal arguments may be complicated, but the human side of the case is simple. If prosecutors win and Perez loses before the Connecticut Supreme Court, the former mayor could face his original sentence of three years in prison. If he wins, he could get two new trials.

Perez lost his job but not his freedom when he was convicted more than five years ago on charges that he used his public office for his private gain. He’s been free while his appeal weaves its way through state courts. In 2013, an appellate court threw out his convictions and told prosecutors to start over.

Perez was charged in two separate schemes. In one, Perez was alleged to have taken deeply discounted home renovations from a contractor who also did work for the city; in another, he was alleged to have extorted a city businessman for his own political benefit. Those two cases were eventually tried before one jury. And that’s the issue now.

“The question that the judge had to decide at trial was, do you combine both of those cases, in essence, to make it more efficient?" said Ross Garber, an attorney who specializes in government investigations and who has been following the case. “According to Eddie Perez and his lawyers, that’s the argument in this case -- that by combining the extortion and the bribery cases, the jury couldn’t sort of figure everything out, they couldn’t untangle everything, and they used evidence in once case against the mayor in the other case.”

Perez’s lawyer also said that the mayor would have testified in one case but not the other had they been separate. Combining the two took that option off the table.

An appellate court eventually agreed with Perez. It threw out his convictions and ordered two new trials. Now, prosecutors are appealing that decision before the state’s supreme court. Garber says it’s a significant case, and he expects the court to take its time deciding it.

Jeff Cohen started in newspapers in 2001 and joined Connecticut Public in 2010, where he worked as a reporter and fill-in host. In 2017, he was named news director. Then, in 2022, he became a senior enterprise reporter.

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