Ridgefield Press
THE LAW: Jury acquits Ridgefielder's client, who confessed to murder
Apr 12, 2006

She got her guy off on a murder wrap � after the police got a confession out of him.
But it wasn�t just fancy lawyering. Jennifer Tunnard believes her client was never guilty of the multiple gunshot homicide he confessed to.
�He said, �They threatened me, I was scared, and I thought they were going to deport my family.� One of his brothers is illegal,� Ms. Tunnard said.
What police got was a false or �soft� confession, she believes � something that may happen more often than people like to think.
�Based on the research, it seems it happens about 10% to 20% of the time,� said Ms. Tunnard, a former assistant district attorney in the Bronx who works now for the Main Street firm Hastings, Cohan, Walsh and Lovallo.
Confused, scared, questioned for hours without a lawyer present, her client � Dorian Membreno, 20, of Bridgeport � told the police what he thought they wanted to hear.
So they charged him with the murder of 22-year-old Ariel Ortiz in Bridgeport on May 22, 2005.
�According to the police testimony, they say my client was never a suspect, but they believed he had some information about the shooting,� Ms. Tunnard said.
�...According to my client, the police treated him like he was a suspect, believed he had something to do with the shooting or was the shooter, gave him information about the incident and perpetrator, and questioned him for approximately three hours,� she said.
�During that time my client claimed he was being threatened, and also the police had threatened they were going to call the INS on his family and have them investigated.
�And when that happened, he said �All right, what do you want me to say?� My client used the information the police gave him to give  a confession,� Ms. Tunnard said.
�He said the police were coming at him, they were threatening him.�

Acquittal

Two weeks ago, on Wednesday, March 29, Ms. Membreno walked out of the courtroom, free. The jury had acquitted of murder.
Ms. Tunnard�s case was helped by some mistakes the police made.
�There was no video tape, no audio tape,� she said. �These things are available to the Police Department. It�s a murder case, you�d expect they�d do that. They didn�t do that here.
�There�s new legislation being submitted, I think it�s going to be this fall, for video taped confessions to be required, especially in serious felony cases.
There were also some inconsistencies between the story of what happened as the police told it, and the physical evidence.
�It was just terrible police work,� Ms. Tunnard said.
But the police did have a confession. She had to refute that. She attacked it from several angles.
�At the trial my client testified,� she said.  �...We had an alibi witness, who confirmed he was somewhere else...
�I cross-examined the police officer extensively on the inconsistencies of my client�s statement as it related to the physical evidence obtained the day of the shooting � they were such opposites.�

False confessions

And, there was the issue of false confessions.
�I had an expert clinical and forensic psychologist who testified,� Ms. Tunnard said.
The expert was Sanford Drob from Brooklyn N.Y.
�He testified about the phenomenon of soft confessions, and the personality characteristics and traits of my client, as being highly suggestible. My client was 20 years old when he was arrested,� she said.
�It�s important to note that these cases where there are false confessions, it happens with people who are highly suggestible, they�re young, they may have some mental disabilities,� she said. �You have to look at their personality characteristics. If the person is on drugs they can be highly suggestible when being interrogated.�
The understanding of false confessions has increased with the advent of DNA evidence � which can be powerful enough to prove people innocent, despite false confessions.
Ms. Tunnard pointed to the highly publicized case of the �the Central Park jogger� who was attacked in New York some years ago.
�She couldn�t identify her attackers. They arrested a couple of teenagers, they questioned them for hours. They finally confessed after several hours of interrogation,� Ms. Tunnard said. �And then just last year they were released because they�d found the true perpetrator, based DNA evidence.�
Do the people who make false confessions generally believe they committed the crime at the time they�re confessing to it?
Ms. Tunnard believes not.
�They just give it to them because they know the police are going to lay off, and get off their back,� she said.

Discrepancies

At the trial, she also sought to exploit the discrepancies between the story of the shooting as the prosecution told it, and the story suggested by the physical evidence.
�The police believe it happened on one floor, and physical evidence showed that the victim was shot on a lower level and then chased up to the floor where he met his demise,� Ms. Tunnard said.
�It was a multiple shooting, multiple gunshot wounds, and the location of the shots, where my client told them, were completely inconsistent with the gunshot wounds.
�The description of the perpetrator that was obtained by one of the police witnesses: six foot one, 180 pounds, whereas my client is five foot eight, 120 pounds,� she said.
The state�s case had other weaknesses to exploit.
�It was the police�s claim that my guy, the motive that they raised was because the victim hit my client in the face a couple of days before � he sucker-punched him...
�There was never any evidence provided to the jury that my guy was ever seen with a gun, or that he ever possessed one, or owned one.�

Gut feeling

Ms. Tunnard said she believed in her client�s innocence from the start.
�When I first met with him and I interviewed with him a couple of times, I couldn�t believe that he had anything to do with this. I don�t know how to explain it. I had a gut feeling,� she said.
�I interviewed a number of people before I even went to see him to find out what kind of person I�m dealing with. This wasn�t a kid who had criminal history. This wasn�t a kid who was in trouble all the time. He came from a good family. He had a good job. He was good kid. He worked for Lens Crafters as a lens technician.�
Because of the rules of evidence and discovery in Connecticut, she wasn�t able to get a look at her client�s confession right away.
�I knew there was a confession. I didn�t know what was in it,� she said.
Ms. Tunnard is of Dominican descent, and her command of Spanish proved very useful.
�The family felt comfortable with me because of my experiences, and the fact I was fluent in Spanish,� she said.
Her experience on the other side of criminal cases was also helpful.
�I�m a former prosecutor from Bronx County, an assistant D.A. in The Bronx for six years,� she said. �I tried many felony cases. I handled mostly felony cases when I was there, specializing in sexual assaults and child molestation.�
But she also did homicide prosecutions.
Since her prosecutor days she�s been with a number of private lawfirms, most recently Koors and Jednak in Bronx, doing work that included insurance cases.
She joined Hastings, Cohan, Walsh and Lovallo in March of 2005. �My practice now consists of criminal defense, personal injury and real estate,� she said.

Ridgefielder, raising kids

She and her husband Thomas Tunnard have lived in Ridgefield nine years. They have a daughter and a son: Mackenzie, 7, goes to Barlow Mountain School, and Logan is 3.
Ms. Tunnard said she was satisfied with the work she�d done for Mr. Membreno, but didn�t feel triumphant or celebratory.
�Somebody�s dead,� she said
�It�s our job as defense attorneys to give people the best defense possible and to protect their Constitutional rights,� she said.
�That�s all I did. I did my job.�



� Copyright by Hersam Acorn newspapers

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