Michelle Troconis' lawyer tried to persuade the country Supreme Courtroom Wednesday that he has been wrongly denied access to records of a divorce case in which a judge improperly barred the public from a potentially explosive hearing and sealed the transcript from public view.

Troconis chaser Jon L. Schoenhorn has been trying for years to obtain the transcript of a May 2019 custody hearing in the divorce of Jennifer and Fotis Dulos, a bitter breakup that concluded not long afterwards in ane of the country'due south most notorious slayings and suicides.

Jennifer Dulos disappeared and is believed by the police to have been killed by her hubby only days afterwards the hearing, which was to determine who had custody of the couple's children. Her body has not been found. Fotis Dulos subsequently was arrested and charged with her murder, but died by suicide before he could exist tried.

Troconis, Fotis Dulos' girlfriend while the divorce was pending, is accused of conspiring with him to commit murder and obstruction of justice for, among other things, accompanying Dulos while he stuffed bags of encarmine evidence into storm drains and garbage cans in Hartford.

Jennifer Farber Dulos, mother of five, went missing after dropping off her kids at school on May 24, 2019. Her vehicle was later found near Waveny Park in New Canaan, Conn., while blood stains and splatter were found in her garage. Dulos, presumed dead, is still missing.

TNS

Jennifer Farber Dulos, mother of 5, went missing after dropping off her kids at school on May 24, 2019. Her vehicle was later found nearly Waveny Park in New Canaan, Conn., while blood stains and splatter were found in her garage. Dulos, presumed dead, is still missing.

Schoenhorn said he wants access to the hearing transcript to determine whether information technology contains anything that could support Troconis' claim of innocence. She has been costless on a $2.ane million bail since her abort in January 2020.

Schoenhorn will non say whether at that place is anything in particular he hopes to find. And he told the Supreme Courtroom Wednesday he is not trying unseal the divorce record every bit Troconis' lawyer, but on his own equally a "member of the public" who has been aggrieved by the judiciary'south refusal to provide him with a court record that he said has been sealed by an "illegal,"  "unconstitutional," "secret" and, as a result, invalid, court order.

It is not unusual for proceedings and records in divorce and custody cases to be kept undercover in order to protect the privacy rights of litigants from disclosure of materials such every bit deeply personal medical and psychiatric reports. Merely the case earlier the court turns on questions about how records were sealed.

Both Schoenhorn and the state Attorney General'southward function, which is defending the judiciary's refusal to release the records, agree that the Superior Court guess who presided over the custody hearing wrongly barred the public from the courtroom and illegally sealed the transcript. In order to close a courtroom to the public and seal the record, Connecticut law requires judges to follow a detailed procedure that includes giving the public two weeks to contest the guild — steps that were intentionally ignored in the custody hearing.

The disagreement is over how Schoenhorn decided to pursue the records. He asked some other estimate to unseal the transcript and provide him with a copy on the grounds that it had been sealed illegally in the first identify. He is asking the Supreme Court to reverse two lower courts that denied him the record, like-minded with the Attorney Full general that if judges are allowed to arbitrarily reverse i another information technology would lead to a flurry of what Chief Justice Richard A. Robinson chosen "approximate shopping" and chaos in the court system.

The hearing in question was convened to accept testimony from Dr. Richard Herman, a child psychologist perchance best known for taking the position, in another notorious custody instance, that the experts at Yale New Oasis Hospital were wrong 30 years ago when they decided comedian Woody Allen had non molested his then-7-year old daughter.

Schoenhorn started looking for a record of the hearing in 2021. The case had been dismissed a twelvemonth earlier considering the parties were declared dead or presumed to exist. He was told he couldn't have a transcript because the file had been sealed. When he couldn't find a court order sealing the case — he afterward learned that, also, had been made secret — he filed adapt in an attempt to forcefulness the judiciary to plow it over. He lost in the Superior Court and the Supreme Court decided to take the entreatment directly.

The Attorney General's office had better luck. According to court filings, it notified Schoenhorn that there had been a court order sealing the case and the order had been filed in public. Schoenhorn was told the reason he couldn't find the society was because it had been inadvertently made underground by a clerical error. The Attorney General's role as well disclosed that not all of the hearing transcript had been sealed — simply the part Schoenhorn wanted.

"It has come to our attention that there was a clerical error that led to the entire May 14, 2019, transcript being marked as sealed," an explanatory email from the Attorney General'due south function said. "Only Dr. Herman'due south testimony was sealed. The remainder of the May fourteen, 2019, transcript, including the court's order sealing the courtroom, was not subject to the sealing order. The clerical issue has been resolved. Please discover attached the transcript of the portion of the May 14, 2019, hearing that is non discipline to the sealing order."

Schoenhorn complained to the justices Midweek that he has never been told how the Chaser General'due south office was able to access supposedly hush-hush records that had been denied him.

"How the Chaser Full general's part got that excerpt has never been explained," he said. "How they went through the transcript to go that portion that I was somewhen given has never been explained."

The justices in their questions sounded skeptical at times of Schoenhorn'due south arguments, suggesting he could have pursued other ways of obtaining the hearing record, such equally claiming in criminal court that it may contain cloth pointing to Troconis' innocence.

There were references throughout the arguments of examples of hugger-mugger record abuses in land courts, including a controversial past practice — since reversed — under which courts agreed to make hush-hush the divorce cases of rich and influential litigants.