Tagged: Conviction Integrity Unit

Developments in Compensation for Exonerees

Two developments in New York State took place last week that may reveal a less strict approach to compensating exonerees. First, David Ranta, a man who was framed by Brooklyn detective Louis Scarcella and served 23 years in prison for a murder he did not commit  reached an agreement with the office of the City Comptroller, Scott Stringer, to receive $6.4 million in compensation. Ranta’s $150 million claim was settled by the city comptroller, Scott Stringer, without a law suit ever being filed and thus without involving the City’s legal department.  This was the first case to be disposed of by the new Conviction Integrity Unit in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, and that office joined in the application to vacate the conviction. While Stringer took some heat for this decision, he made clear that spending millions of dollars and many years in litigation would not do anyone justice in a case where the district attorney joined in the motion to vacate the conviction.

Second, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced legislation that would allow people who have confessed or pleaded guilty to a crime they did not commit to sue the state for damages.  This change seemingly would go hand in hand with the amendment to N.Y. CPL § 440 that allowed convicted defendants who had plead guilty to bring a post-conviction motion for DNA testing.  As Schneiderman noted in his announcement, 10 of the 27 people in New York who have had their convictions vacated based on DNA had falsely confessed or pleaded guilty.  Such people will be able to sue for compensation even if they cannot prove that their confession or guilty plea was coerced. The proposed bill would also extend the statute of limitations for wrongful conviction compensation claims from two to three years.

These developments make sense.  NYC Comptroller Stringer’s decision to settle a claim without years of expensive litigation is a welcome breath of fresh air in our overly contentious adversary system and will allow the millions that would have been spent on defending the indefensible to be used to pay other wrongfully convicted individuals or for other important criminal justice purposes.  Similarly, given what we now know about the causes of wrongful conviction, we should welcome the end of our pretending that false confessions do not exist.

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Let’s Make Brady v. Maryland Meaningful

The Brooklyn District Attorney has promised to review 50 convictions that relied on the work of police detective Louis Scarcella – linked to “troubling aspects” of one case that was recently overturned.

The newly established Conviction Integrity Unit will review all of the cases where Scarcella was the lead detective and where the police investigation culminated in a conviction after trial.  

The New York Times reported that Scarcella relied on a single eyewitness to make at least a dozen cases.  The witness was known to be a drug-addicted prostitute who claimed to have seen multiple different murders happen before her eyes.

We applaud DA Hynes for establishing a Conviction Integrity Unity, and for focusing on the work of Scarcella. However, we believe that broader interpretation of the Brady rule would have prevented these convictions and could prevent other miscarriages of justice going forward.  Any time a police informant takes the stand, the prosecution should be required to discover and disclose not just a witness’s prior record and the benefit expected in exchange for testimony (that information is required to be disclosed now – pursuant to the current conservative interpretation of Brady), but also information about all the other cases where the informant has testified in the past.  If defense counsel had been told that Scarcella’s informant had traveled around Brooklyn spotting murders, counsel might have argued to the jury that the informant’s testimony was simply not credible. The prosecution might have reached that same conclusion on its own. But, since Scarcella was not required to enlighten the prosecution regarding the informant’s special history, the prosecution could turn a blind eye and keep defense counsel in the dark too.  A broader reading of the Brady obligation would put a stop to such willful ignorance.  

Read the New York Times May 19, 2013 editorial on Brady here:  

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