Charges Effectively Dropped Against Yale Worker Who Smashed Slave Image

NEW HAVEN, CT—Criminal charges have essentially been dropped against the Yale University worker accused of smashing a stained glass window depicting slaves.

Corey Menafee is also back to work at Yale after the school decided to hire him back following his resignation, according to the New Haven Register.
Prosecutors decided to nolle the case and a judge approved the measure. A nolle in Connecticut gives a prosecutor the option to reverse the decision and prosecute within 13 months, but often it amounts to a case being effectively dismissed.
Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney David Strollo said Yale wanted to drop the charges against Menafee and the state in that case didn’t want to use limited resources to prosecute him, according to the Hartford Courant.

Menafee, his lawyer, the university and the union representing Menafee agreed to not speak publicly about the case as a condition of his rehiring, according to the New Haven Independent.
Strollo added that the state doesn’t condone the activity that got him arrested.
The school previously asked the State's Attorney to drop the case against Menafee who was arrested for criminal mischief and reckless endangerment after he smashed a stained glass window that depicted two slaves carrying cotton.
Part of the glass fell outside and onto a passerby. Menafee, a dishwasher, resigned from the university following the incident.
The incident happened in the Calhoun residential college, which is named after John Calhoun, a 19th-century vice president and proponent of slavery.
Menafee told the New Haven Independent that he impulsively decided to break the panel June 13 with a broomstick and regretted the decision. He said he was tired of seeing the panel.
The incident didn’t gain much notoriety until the Independent published a story.
He later said he would like his job back at the university.

Image via Addy Cameron-Huff/Flickr Commons