Adam Zachs, who eluded authorities for 22 years after being convicted in the 1987 killing of a man following a bar fight, will soon get a chance to have his murder conviction overturned.
Zachs’ habeas corpus claim is headed for trial. It was scheduled for next week in Rockville but will be rescheduled. In a petition for a new trial attorney Aaron Romano is claiming that Zachs did not get the lawyer of his choice during his 1988 murder trial and that the trial attorney he ended up with was ineffective because, among other things, he failed to have the murder weapon examined by a firearms expert to back Zachs’ claim that it fired accidentally.
The murder weapon, a Smith & Wesson 9 mm handgun, has since been lost, state officials admit.
Authorities located him by tracking the movement of money from his father, Frederick Zachs, to employees of the elder Zachs’ company, to Adam Zachs. He was extradited back to Hartford five months later and placed in prison. Frederick Zachs was convicted of helping his son avoid capture and was sentenced to six months in a federal prison.
The habeas petition seeking a new trial was filed in early 2012 and has been pending ever since.
The habeas petition argues that Zachs deserves a new trial because of ineffective counsel by Daly, who has since died. Among the claims is that Daly should have sought a mistrial after he realized that two state witnesses who were going to testify against Zachs had been longtime clients of Daly’s.
In its motions, the state is asking for Zachs’ habeas petition to be dismissed because after nearly 30 years records from his trial are sparse. The judge, prosecutor and defense attorney from the trial have all died. There is no transcript of the hearing in which Wice was denied entrance to the Connecticut bar.
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-adam-zachs-new-trial-20171030-story.html
