Clyde Meikle prays silently beside his attorney, Yale Law School’s Miriam Gohara, as he awaits Judge David Gold’s ruling on his request for a shorter sentence.
A Hartford Superior Court judge granted a sentence modification on Friday to Clyde Meikle, a man serving a 50-year prison sentence for killing his cousin in 1994.
“The Clyde Meikle of 1994 was a different person than the Clyde Meikle that stands before the court today,” Judge David Gold said before granting Meikle’s sentence modification, cutting his sentence from 50 years to 28.
Meikle killed his cousin Clifford Walker 26 years ago by shooting him in the stomach during a dispute over a parking space at his family’s house on Enfield Street in Hartford’s North End. Meikle, who long suffered from substance abuse and unresolved trauma at the time of the shooting, was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 1998. He has served 26 years so far, during which he has earned a GED and the credits for a college degree and b