A jury of four men and two women took fewer than two hours Thursday to convict an Ansonia man of robbing a Seymour bank last year.
Thomas “Country” Steele, 54, stood motionless next to his lawyer as the jury announced its verdict about 3 p.m. at Superior Court in Milford.
He now faces up to 45 years behind bars on charges of first-degree robbery, conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery, and conspiracy to commit third-degree larceny.
Before the case went to trial he had declined an offer to serve between five and 10 years in prison.
Judge Denise Markle scheduled Steele’s sentencing for Aug. 27.
Thursday marked the fourth day of Steele’s trial in the case on charges he robbed the Webster Bank at 15 New Haven Road in Seymour Feb. 16, 2013.
He has been jailed on $200,000 bond since his arrest in the case last June.
He was charged after Seymour police traced a green Cadillac allegedly used in the heist first to a friend of Steele’s, then to Steele himself.
Cops also found evidence linking Steele to the heist at motels he had stayed at in the days after the robbery.
Click here to read about the first day of the trial.
Click here to read about the second day of the trial.
Click here to read about the third day of the trial.
Steele did not testify on his own behalf, nor did he call any witnesses to rebut more than 70 exhibits of mostly circumstantial evidence presented by Assistant State’s Attorney Amy Bepko linking him to the crime.
Steele’s lawyer, Daniel Ford, said after the verdict that he was disappointed.
“We obviously had a trial because we thought there was insufficient evidence to support such a verdict,” Ford said.
During closing arguments Thursday, Ford cited inconsistencies in the state’s case and told jurors the evidence presented “doesn’t add up.”
“All of these facts lead to mere suspicion, and that’s how we got here today. None of these things add up to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, none of them,” he said. “You have to vote not guilty. The state did not meet its burden.”
Bepko countered that the evidence against Steele was overwhelming.
“Suspicion? No. Coincidence? No. Evidence of guilt? Absolutely,” she told the jury.
After deliberating for about an hour and a half, the jury agreed with her.
Reaction
After the verdict, Ford said he didn’t think one piece of evidence was the key to convicting his client.
“It was a circumstantial case,” he said. “The state did a good job of tying all the pieces together.”
Still, he said, he thinks Steele may have grounds for an appeal with respect to evidence presented Wednesday tying Steele’s cell phone to the area of the robbery itself and to several other locations connected to the heist.
Seymour Police Detective Steven Ditria had testified that he had been taught to interpret the data during a phone call with a representative from Sprint, Steele’s cell phone carrier.
Ford tried Wednesday to prevent Bepko from asking Ditria about the cell phone data, arguing he wasn’t an expert on the highly technical realm of digital cellular technology.
During his closing argument in the case Thursday, he called the testimony “hocus-pocus.”
Ford reiterated the critique after the verdict.
“I think the testimony from Detective Ditria should be examined by the Appellate Court,” he said.
Bepko said she was happy with the verdict and credited the jurors with being able to put all the pieces together.
“Sometimes without a lot of (direct) evidence, it’s hard for people to wrap their heads around a concept,” she said.
She said she’ll review the file and a pre-sentence report to be completed by probation officials before coming up with an amount of prison time to seek at the August sentencing.
The jury’s foreman, Ansonia resident David Pecoraro, said outside the courthouse that there wasn’t one single piece of evidence that made up the jury’s mind.
“It was kind of just a culmination of everything together,” he said. “We felt it really couldn’t go any other way.”
“The biggest debate we had was on the first charge, the robbery one, which actually puts him in the bank,” Pecoraro went on. “I think that’s what took the most time, trying to figure that out and coming to the conclusion that it was him.”
