The court defends the conviction in the case of Murder of Fitbit despite the errors by the prosecutor

By Dave Collins

Hartford, Connecticut (AP) – Although a prosecutor committed the “irregularities”, the Connectic Supreme Court confirmed on Monday the conviction for murder of a man declared guilty of Killing his wife In a case that caught the attention because the victim’s fitbit exercise tracker contradicted his statements with the police.

The judges ruled in a 6-0 decision that Richard Dabate was not deprived of a fair trial due to four false steps by the prosecutor who called “worrying”, including reference to one of Connectic’s most notorious crimes while examining the man.

Dabate, 48, was convicted of murder and other positions in the fatal shooting of Connie Dabate, 39, at the couple’s house in Ellington two days before Christmas in 2015, while her two young children were in school. He is serving a 65 -year prison sentence.

The prosecutors said that Dabate wanted his wife to be dead, in part, because he had an adventure of years with another woman who was pregnant at the time of the murder and then gave birth to her son.

Dabate organized a false scene of the crime, which includes freely tied with zip and stabbing with a box cutter, and told the police that an unknown intruder in the camouflage broke into his house, killed his wife and assaulted him, the authorities said.

The State Police said that Dabate gave them a schedule of events that came into conflict with the data in his wife’s fitbit, which showed that he moved for about an hour after Dabate said he was shot.

Dabate testified in his defense and maintained his innocence, saying that a great man masked with a voice like actor Vin Diesel was the murderer.

Part of Dabate’s appeal questioned the reliability of Fitbit’s evidence and if the judge of first instance was wrong to have allowed it, but the Supreme Court confirmed the data and its use.

Dabate also accused Tolland’s state prosecutor, Matthew Gedansky, of multiple cases of incorrectness, including Gedansky who mentions a notorious House invasion in Cheshire In 2007 while examining Dabate. The invaders of the house killed a woman and her two daughters, aged 11 and 17, after terrorizing them for hours, while the woman’s husband survived a vicious beating.

Gedansky asked Dabate if he was trying to create a “small mini-fuss scene” in his own home. The first instance judge confirmed an objection of Dabate’s lawyer and asked Gedansky to reformulate the question, but Gedansky asked almost the same exact question. The Supreme Court found that Gedansky violated the judge’s order to reformulate.

“When referring to a ‘Mini Cheshire’, the prosecutor’s question was unnecessarily inflammatory because he compared the accused with other notorious criminals or infamous figures,” Judge Joan Alexander wrote in the decision.

Gedansky did not immediately return an email message on comments on Monday.

Dabate’s lawyer, Trent Lalima, said he and his client were disappointed with the court ruling.

“We believe we present solid problems that support a new test for Rick Dabate,” Lalima wrote in an email to Associated Press. “We are evaluating the best next steps for Rick, who has firmly maintained his innocence for almost a decade.”

The Supreme Court also determined that Gedansky committed three other irregularities, including the suggestion that the jury would have to be unintelligent or lazy to agree with the theory of defense of the case.

“We unlearn the irregularities committed by the prosecutor during the trial of this case in strong and not qualified terms and we hope that our message will be taken with the greatest severity by the prosecutors,” the decision said.

The court said he agreed with Dabate that “the prosecutor participated in multiple acts of improperity in the trial that we consider worrying.”

The judges, however, said that the case of the State was very strong and that Gedansky’s false steps did not eclipse the testimony of 130 witnesses and the 600 exhibitions presented during the five -week trial.

Originally published: March 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM PDT