A Connecticut exoneree on Tuesday urged a federal jury to award more than $50 million — or $5,000 per day — for the three decades he spent behind bars for a 1985 murder, arguing two town cops ignored cracks in the case almost from the beginning.

Capping a civil rights trial that lasted more than a week, Douglas E. Lieb of Kaufman Lieb Lebowitz & Frick LLP said the proposed cash figure was a high but necessary price for former New Milford police officers Steven Jordan and David Shortt to pay for his client Ralph "Ricky" Birch's conviction.

"We entrust the police with the power to take away people's freedom," Lieb told the jury of eight men. "With great power comes great responsibility."

Jordan, the crime scene evidence officer, didn't raise red flags when an unknown officer found $1,000 somewhere at the scene, Lieb said. And Shortt didn't stop a state police interrogator from feeding details to a jailhouse informant who later claimed Birch had confessed.

Shortt "coached, led and fed," Lieb said while pointing to a trial transcript displayed on courtroom monitors. "Right there, in black and white, he knew it was wrong."

"Under our Constitution, an officer silently complicit with wrongdoing is just as responsible as the wrongdoer," he later argued.

Juries in 1989 convicted Birch and Shawn Henning of felony murder in the Dec. 1, 1985, stabbing death of Everett Carr inside his home. Birch and Henning were 18 and 17, respectively, at the time of the killing. Police said Carr interrupted a burglary and that the intruders had killed him.

Lieb said the case was questionable from the beginning because real burglars would not have left the $1,000 behind.

The real killer or killers instead left bloody shoeprints too small to have been left by Birch or Henning, he indicated. A witness testified March 10 that the prints did not match the patterns of the teens' shoes.

Carr's blood was mixed with unknown DNA on multiple pieces of evidence, Lieb reminded the jury. No evidence of the crime turned up in an unkempt car Birch and Henning were driving. Hair comparisons and even lint retrieved from Henning's father's clothes dryer also turned up nothing, Lieb said.

New Milford's deputy chief interviewed both teens and determined they weren't involved, the attorney noted. The chief took the skeptical deputy chief off the case and pushed forward anyway, the deputy chief testified.

It was rational for New Milford and state authorities to examine Birch and Henning, two small-time burglars trying to feed a drug habit, Lieb said, but within a week they should have followed the evidence and cast a wider net.

Jurors at Birch's 1989 trial asked during deliberations for a readback of the definition of reasonable doubt during deliberation, Lieb noted, arguing the criminal jury was on the fence about the strength of the evidence.

He accused Jordan of lying about his search of Carr's home in the current trial, saying it was one of four "big whoppers" jurors heard from the defense.

The issue, Lieb argued, was Jordan's changing position on where the $1,000 turned up.

According to Lieb, a scant paper trial suggests an unknown officer likely saw and secured the money inside Carr's home on Dec. 2, 1985, before the authorities got a search warrant from a Litchfield judge.

But Jordan now claims the money may have turned up as late as Dec. 4, perhaps outside the home where other evidence was seized. Lieb called that a "ridiculous story."

Lieb said the $1,000 was probably in plain sight. It was soon turned over to Carr's daughter, he indicated.

Paperwork surrounding the discovery was never included in binders of evidence, and Birch said he never knew of the cash, Lieb noted.

Other evidence suggested a crime of passion, he argued. Carr was beaten and stabbed 27 times and his throat slit.

Arguing for Jordan and the estate of Shortt, who died in 2019, Elliot B. Spector of Hassett & George PC pushed back against Lieb's attack on Jordan and other witnesses.

"It's not fair to attack these gentlemen for testifying to the best of their recollections," he argued.

Spector said the $1,000 was likely hidden somewhere around the scene and might not have even been in the house. That's why forms memorializing the discovery didn't state that it was found pursuant to a warrant, and it also explains why another officer didn't include it in the master case binders, he argued.

He said reasonable officers correctly concluded the cash was of "little importance" and was not exculpatory evidence.

Spector argued that Jordan was under no duty to hand-deliver the money to the state's attorney's office and cannot be held liable for the omissions and choices of others who discounted its probative value.

"Lieb expects you to rely on a fantasy, a fabricated story," he told the jury, arguing that the cash didn't appear until a more thorough search days after the killing.

He said Jordan "logically, practical, ethically and legally" brought the cash to Carr's daughter.

Spector also defended the interrogation of Todd Cocchia, the jailhouse informant who claimed Birch had admitted killing Carr.

He said Shortt only watched a state police interrogator give Cocchia "a few inconsequential facts" about the case, not the full story.

According to Spector, the authorities took Cocchia at his word because he signed a statement promising he was telling the truth. He said officers are employed to gather facts, not weigh an informant's veracity.

Spector claimed Shortt had no duty to intervene in the interrogation. "Shortt was merely a witness to a brief, cordial, consensual interview and should not be held liable," he told the jury.

Cocchia was a key witness at Birch's trial. He recanted the story nearly three decades later.

Challenging causation, Spector said Birch's conviction was not imminent when Shortt was part of the contested interrogation.

He also said Birch's 1989 conviction was not imminent when Jordan handled the $1,000 in 1985.

Spector also defended the original burglary-gone-wrong theory as logical because some coins, some jewelry, and a VCR were taken from Carr's home.

"It wasn't an efficient burglary, but it was a burglary nonetheless," he argued.

The state of Connecticut separately settled with Birch and Henning for $12.6 million each in 2024, ending accusations that Henry C. Lee, a renowned forensics expert and former director of the Connecticut State Forensic Laboratory, falsely testified that a towel recovered from an upstairs bathroom at the crime scene had come up positive in a screening test for blood.

When asking lawmakers to OK the settlement in 2024, Deputy Attorney General Eileen Meskill said the towel was never tested before trial and that subsequent tests proved that a small red stain on the towel was not blood.

Birch was behind bars from age 22 until age 52, when the state, in 2019, tossed his conviction and refused to try him a second time. He is now 58.

The jury deliberated Tuesday afternoon and left without rendering a verdict. Deliberations resume Wednesday.

Birch is represented by David A. Lebowitz, Douglas E. Lieb and Alyssa Isidoridy of Kaufman Lieb Lebowitz & Frick LLP.

Jordan and Shortt's estate are represented by Elliot B. Spector, Jeffrey O. McDonald and Forrest Noirot of Hassett & George PC.

The case is Birch v. New Milford et al., case number 3:20-cv-01790, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.

--Editing by Brian Baresch.