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COURIER L 16 IFE, JULY 17-23, 2020
Reckoning
with the past
DA releases new study on 25
wrongfully-convicted Brooklynites
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez
released a 100-page study on July 9
investigating the cases of 25 wrongfully
convicted Brooklynites, who had
spent a combined 426 years in prison
— which the borough’s top prosecutor
hopes will serve as a tool for improving
the criminal justice system nationwide.
“For us to build community trust,
especially now, when so many people
in this country are expressing anger
and despair with the system, we must
reckon with and be transparent about
the mistakes of the past,” said Gonzalez
in a statement. “We must also
learn from these errors so that we can
avoid them in the future. It is my hope
that this study will contribute to these
goals.”
The report gives a deep look into
20 cases that had been re-investigated
by the DA’s Conviction Review Unit —
which former District Attorney Ken
Thompson established in 2014 to help
investigate and overturn wrongful
convictions.
Those 20 cases led to the exoneration
of 25 people between 2014 and 2019,
according to Gonzalez, who said the
report gives a fi rst-of-its-kind insight
into what factors lead to a convicted
person being exonerated.
“Around the country, the reasons
why a prosecutor’s offi ce chooses to
support a convicted person’s exoneration
are not usually disclosed in detail,”
he said in the report. “The District
Attorney made the decision to do
something different here — to invite
the public to look inside these cases
and to reveal the Kings County District
Attorney’s own assessment as to
what went wrong in each of them. And
insofar as we are aware, this is the
fi rst time any prosecutor’s offi ce in the
nation has done so.”
Most of the wrongful convictions
happened between the 1980s and 1990s,
and all but one of the exonerees in the
study were people of color. Three of them
died in prison and were exonerated posthumously,
according to the report.
Done in collaboration with the advocacy
nonprofi t The Innocence Project
and the law fi rm WilmerHale, the
study examines eight factors, one of
more of which was present in each exoneration.
The most common factor in each
case was prosecutor misconduct or error,
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
Photo by Colin Mixson
which played a role in 17, or 85 percent,
of the cases. In those instances,
the attorneys either did not properly
scrutinize the amount of evidence
at hand, or the reliability of that evidence,
according to the report.
“Doing justice also means doing
everything in the prosecutor’s power
to ensure that the trial is fair,” the report
states. “Prosecutors in a number
of these cases failed to meet this standard,
whether on direct examinations,
cross-examinations, or openings/summations,
at times exaggerating or mischaracterizing
testimony on critical
questions presented to the jury.”
Police misconduct or error was the
second most prevalent factor in the exonerated
cases, having infl uenced 13 of
the exonerations. In those instances,
the report notes, there were serious
red fl ags with the reliability of confessions
and witness testimony — and
in three cases, cops even coached witnesses,
failed to give crucial information,
or provided false testimony.
In November, Gothamist revealed
that the DA’s offi ce also kept secret
lists of dozens of police offi cers they
deemed to have credibility issues.
Other signifi cant factors included
nondisclosure of evidence that could
help stop a conviction, which was present
in 45 percent of the cases. Witness
credibility issues and defense lawyers
doing a bad job were also factors in 40
percent of the studied cases.
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