If retired NYPD detective Louis Scarcella still gets The New York Times, he may want to skip this morning's edition. Last year, the Brooklyn district attorney's office has reviewed all of the convictions based on the work Scarcella did in his quarter-century career after evidence surfaced that he'd framed an innocent man for murder. Well, yesterday prosecutors decided to ask a judge to toss out the convictions of three men--one posthumously--who ended up in prison for murder because of Scarcella. They will be the first to be exonerated since the review began.
The defendants, Alvena Jennette, Robert Hill and Darryl Austin, will become the first people connected with the detective, Louis Scarcella, to be exonerated since the district attorney’s office last year began reviewing 57 trial convictions obtained through the work of Mr. Scarcella.
Mr. Scarcella, whose investigative work was blamed last year for a wrongful conviction that kept a man in prison for 23 years, was accused of fabricating confessions, coercing witnesses and failing to turn in exculpatory evidence. The most damning pattern in the detective’s cases — uncovered last year by The New York Times — was the use of Teresa Gomez, a crack addict who was a witness in six separate murder cases.
Ms. Gomez, who is deceased, often got crucial details wrong and contradicted other witnesses. One case she testified in was dismissed because she failed to show up for her cross-examination. Another man accepted a guilty plea, and then wrote despondent letters to the judge saying that Ms. Gomez, whom he described as a person who would sell a close relative for crack, had railroaded him.
Ms. Gomez had testified against Mr. Jennette, Mr. Hill and Mr. Austin.
Jennette and Austin, who are brothers, were convicted in 1988 for the 1985 murder of Ronnie "Pepper" Durant in Crown Heights and sentenced to 18 years to life in prison. Jennette was paroled in 2007, while Austin died in prison in 2000. As I mentioned
last month, the case gained new life after it emerged that Scarcella may have failed to turn over the notebook of the detective who originally handled the case. Those notes contained an interview with a witness who gave the name and address of the person who is believed to have actually committed the murder--but they were never turned over to the defense either at trial or during Jennette's nine previous attempts to appeal his conviction. On the face of it, this is at least as ghastly as the case that originally put the hot lights on Scarcella, David Ranta. He was convicted in 1990 for murdering a popular Brooklyn rabbi, but was exonerated last year after evidence surfaced that Scarcella not only fabricated Ranta's confession, but coached a witness into picking Ranta out of a line up. Back in February, the city agreed to
pay Ranta $6.4 million rather than fight a civil-rights suit it would have almost certainly lost.
Hill was convicted in 1988 for the murder of Donald Manboardes. He was convicted mainly 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. Hill maintains that he actually found Manboardes in the basement of his grandmother's house and had three of his friends help take him to the hospital. The three friends were never called to testify, and last year gave interviews backing up Hill's account. Hill is the only one of the three who is still in prison.
Jennette and Hill are due to be formally exonerated later today in a Brooklyn court, with Austin's mother standing in for Austin. The review is still very much underway, and has been given new life after new DA Ken Thompson inherited it from his predecessor, Charles Hynes. But from the looks of it, Scarcella needs to be driven into poverty--and also sent to prison himself for a long time.