While most attention regarding misconduct by the New York Police Department has focused on the Eric Garner affair, an equally outrageous episode is still well underway. For almost two years, retired NYPD detective Louis Scarcella has been the focus of an investigation into most of his cases by the Brooklyn district attorney's office, triggered when evidence came to light that he railroaded David Ranta for the murder of a Williamsburg rabbi.
Earlier this week, New York City comptroller Scott Stringer announced that the city would pay a total of $17 million to two men and the family of a third who had been convicted of murder in cases handled by Scarcella. Robert Hill, Alvena Jennette, and Darryl Austin were exonerated last year--posthumously, in the case of Austin--when evidence came to light that proved beyond all doubt they were innocent, and strongly suggested that Scarcella had railroaded them. A review by the DA's Conviction Review Unit found that Scarcella failed to turn over exculpatory evidence. Additionally, it found that Teresa Gomez, the star witness in Jennette and Austin's 1987 trial and Hill's 1988 trial had gotten several facts wrong--bad wrong. Her 1987 testimony was so far off the mark that Jennette and Austin's lawyers thought she may have been stoned on the stand. Gomez had been used as a witness in several of Scarcella's cases, and this disclosure may put dozens more of Scarcella's cases in doubt.
It seems to be only a matter of time before Scarcella himself is up before a judge. But I have to wonder--could he be staring down the barrel of federal civil rights charges as well? While the feds may be keeping any involvement in this case hush-hush, it's inconceivable that the area U. S. Attorney and soon-to-be Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, isn't taking a look at it. This situation is simply too egregious to ignore.
Consider what happened in the Ranta case. It fell apart when the person who identified him in a lineup claimed Scarcella had told him to pick Ranta. After numerous other irregularities came to light, Ranta was freed after spending 23 years in prison. Last year, facing the prospect of a civil rights lawsuit it almost certainly would have lost, the city agreed to pay Ranta $6.4 million.
The cases of Hill, Jennette and Austin are equally ghastly. In Hill's case, the three people who supposedly helped him stuff the body of Donald Manbordes in a cab after Hill supposedly killed him were never called to testify. All three corroborated Hill's claim that he found Manbordes in the basement of his grandmother's house. Additionally, when Scarcella inherited the case of the murder of Ronnie Durant, he didn't turn over the previous detective's notebook to the defense. That notebook contained an interview with another witness who gave the name and address of a person whom that witness said was the real killer--and it wasn't Jennette and Austin.
I haven't been able to crunch the numbers, but if Scarcella were tried and convicted on federal charges of depriving Ranta, Jennette, Austin and Hill of their rights under color of law, he could potentially spend the rest of his life in prison. While the city has so far shelled out $23 million as a result of Scarcella's misconduct, the only real justice will be if Scarcella himself ends up in an orange jumpsuit. Given the circumstances, this is a situation where no expense should be spared to ensure that this guy goes to prison himself for a very long time.