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The Case of Stefon Morant
📻 Episode #111
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Jan 22, 2020
About This Episode
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Stefon Morant and Scott Lewis were selling drugs for organized crime figure Frank Parise. When Frank was set to go away on a weapon’s charge, he asked Scott to take over the drug dealing arm of his criminal enterprise, but Scott wasn’t trying to go deeper into illegal…
The Case
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Stefon Morant and Scott Lewis were selling drugs for organized crime figure Frank Parise. When Frank was set to go away on a weapon’s charge, he asked Scott to take over the drug dealing arm of his criminal enterprise, but Scott wasn’t trying to go deeper into illegal activity. When he refused, Frank tapped a detective he had on the payroll, Vincent Raucci.
On October 11th, 1990, former New Haven, CT alderman Ricardo Turner and his lover Lamont Fields were shot dead in their bed, and Raucci knew just who to pin it on. How would he make it stick? By extracting a false confession from Scott’s good friend Stefon - one he would never sign. His refusal to participate in Scott’s railroading sealed him to the same fate. Stefon was in the Carolinas at the time of the murders, but that didn’t matter. Raucci put the screws to another character in the New Haven drug game, Ovil Ruiz, who would name Scott and Stefon in his false confession in exchange for leniency in his own legal troubles.
With the help of Raucci’s direct supervisor, Detective Sweeney, an FBI investigation, and the tireless aid of some Ivy League law school students under the tutelage of professor Brett Dignam, Scott Lewis would eventually be fully exonerated. However, the District Attorney would only allow Stefon to cop a plea, rather than be declared innocent as well. The man that was targeted for wrongful conviction simply for knowing Scott Lewis is still fighting for exoneration from the outside for the same crimes that Scott was exonerated for in 2016.
The trailer for the documentary “120 Years” about Scoot and Stefon’s case can be found here: https://www.120yearsfilm.com/
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:05:27“Speaker 3: answering anything because I didn't know what was going on. Speaker 3: He opened the back door and he thrust me in. Speaker 3: That was the beginning of a nightmare of my life. Speaker 3: They took me to the new police precinct, sent me Speaker 3: to the Detective Burrough help me there for hours. At”
00:19:55“Speaker 3: and my son's are there. So he says to me, Speaker 3: missed this, of course, what kind of questions? And of Speaker 3: course I missed my kids, he said, So what you Speaker 3: gonna do about it? I said, listen, I told you before, Speaker 3: I don't know nothing about this. I'm the same way”
00:34:03“Speaker 3: incarceration I call it today, because of they thrust them Speaker 3: into a cage. I'm that dog that's running away from Speaker 3: the cage, never to go back to that cage again. Speaker 3: I want to go back there, but I want to Speaker 3: go back there for the right reasons, as far as”
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← #110 Patrick Pursley (Live from ComplexCon Chicago 2019) #112 John Restivo →
Also on the podcast: #237 Stefon Morant