Yesterday afternoon, three Brooklyn men convicted of murder in the 1980s had their names formally cleared--one posthumously--after prosecutors admitted their convictions were based mostly or entirely on the testimony from the same crack-addicted woman. That woman, Teresa Gomez, is the focus of a probe into the murder convictions of retired NYPD detective Louis Scarcella. Scarcella used Gomez as a witness in several murder cases. But yesterday, her testimony was formally and completely discredited--meaning that we could have seen the start of a parade of vacated convictions related to both Scarcella and Gomez.
The convictions and all indictment charges were dismissed against Alvena Jennette, Robert Hill and Darryl Austin; of the three, only Mr. Hill was still in prison. Mr. Jennette was released on parole in 2007, and Mr. Austin died in prison.
“It feels so good to actually clear my name,” Mr. Hill said after his release.
Mr. Hill, Mr. Jennette and Mr. Austin were the first Scarcella-related defendants to be exonerated through the efforts of the Brooklyn district attorney’s Conviction Review Unit. The office of the district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, who took office this year, has exonerated three other prisoners in his four months in office.
The process of Hill's formal vindication set the tone. Hill had been convicted in 1988 for murdering Donald Manboardes a year earlier. He now has multiple sclerosis and needs a cane to get around.
As I mentioned yesterday, he was convicted based on testimony from Gomez that he shot Manboardes on a street corner, then stuffed him in a cab with the help of three of his friends. But the three friends were never called to testify, and gave interviews last year that corroborated the story Hill had been telling for over a quarter-century--he found Manboardes' body in the basement of his grandmother's house, and took it to the hospital.
Additionally, when Gomez testified, she got several facts wrong--bad wrong. She claimed to have seen Hill stuff Manboardes into a yellow cab, but the driver was actually driving a blue livery cab and had been hailed by two unarmed people. Small wonder that assistant DA Mark Hale said that his office had no choice to seek the dismissal of a conviction that had been based on an "extremely problematic" witness whose testimony had been "increasingly erratic."
Louise Austin, the mother of all three men, and Jeanette were next before Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Neil Firetog. Louise Austin was standing in for Darryl Austin, who had died in 2000 while still in prison. He and Jeanette had been convicted in 1987 for the murder of Ronnie Durant. It turns out that when Scarcella inherited the case from another detective, he never turned over the previous detective's notebook to the defense. That notebook contained an interview with another witness who gave the name and whereabouts of another person whom that witness said was the real killer. But at yesterday's hearing, Jeanette and Austin's attorney, Pierre Sussman, detonated an equally large bombshell. Apparently Gomez' account of what happened was light years removed from that of another witness. Jennette and Austin's lawyer at the time thought it was so off the wall that he sought to have Gomez tested for drugs. In other words, Jennette and Austin spent 20 and 14 years in prison, respectively, because of a witness who may have been high on the stand. After the trial, the entire family went to dinner--Hill's first good meal in over 25 years.
According to the (New York) Daily News, Thompson felt the irregularities in the Hill and Jeanette-Austin convictions were so egregious that he moved to scuttle the convictions before their lawyers acted to do so. This comes on top of New York City opting to pay $6.4 million in damages to David Ranta, who spent 23 years in prison on the basis of a confession fabricated by Scarcella and a witness whom Scarcella coached to identify Ranta as the man who killed a Brooklyn rabbi. If I were Thompson or the area U. S. Attorney, Loretta Lynch, I'd be seriously thinking about starting a criminal investigation of Scarcella as well, if one isn't underway already. The process that so far has led to Ranta, Jeanette, Austin and Hill being vindicated has spelled out some of the most ghastly police misconduct that has been uncovered in recent memory. The only truly happy ending for this saga is for Scarcella to GO TO PRISON.