Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Marion Coakley was convicted of raping Olga Delgado.  The crime occurred in Delgado's room at the Bronx Park Motel.  Delgado, her boyfriend, Gabriel Vargas, and Delgado's brother-in-law, Jorge Rios each independently described the rapist as a dark complexioned black male with a Jamaican accent, about 26-28 years old, with a short “afro” haircut.  Rios identified Coakley from a photo lineup and got the other two to agree that he was the perpetrator.

Coakley was 28 years old.  However, he was light complexioned and had no Jamaican accent.  He had no “afro” haircut when arrested two days later.  Coakley maintained that he had been at a Bible study meeting at the time of the crime and eight witnesses confirmed his alibi.  Coakley also demanded, took, and passed a polygraph test.  At trial, the jury was forced to resolve a difficult dilemma – eyewitnesses against alibi witnesses.  The jury convicted Coakley.  Coakley's post-conviction counsel then gathered serological tests and other new evidence.  Twenty-five months after the trial, this evidence convinced a court to set aside the conviction.  The DA then agreed to dismiss the charges.  (When Justice Fails) (NY Times)  [1/07]

Jose Morales and Ruben Montalvo were convicted of murdering Jose Antonio Rivera.  Rivera was chased through Kelly Park in the Bronx by a group of teenagers he had been feuding with.  He was stabbed and hit with a baseball bat and sticks.  One of the real killers, Jesus Fornes, confessed responsibility for the killing to a priest.  The apparently guilt-stricken Fornes admitted to him and later to others that he had been part of the group that had killed Rivera, but he insisted that Morales and Montalvo were innocent.  The priest advised he to speak to the court.  Fornes spoke to a defense attorney on the defendants' day of sentencing.  The sentencing was postponed.  In the meantime, Fornes found a lawyer of his own, who advised him not to talk.

After Fornes died in 1997, both the priest and the lawyer independently came forward, as Fornes' death relieved them of any professional responsibility to keep Fornes' statements confidential.   Both Morales and Montalvo were released in 2001 after this new evidence exonerated them.  (NY Times)

Jose Garcia was convicted of the murder of a friend named Cesar Vasquez.  Three gunmen shot Vasquez to death in a courtyard on Bailey Avenue.  Prosecutors at Garcia's 1993 trial claimed Vasquez and Garcia were linked to a drug gang battling for turf with rivals.  However, they failed to show proof of Garcia's alleged motive.  Their case rested on the testimony of one witness who claimed she saw the shooting.

Garcia was in the Dominican Republic at the time of the shooting and did not return to the U.S. until 17 days later.  At trial, Garcia's lawyer presented almost nothing of his alibi.  In Dec. 2006, after Garcia had served 15 years of imprisonment, a judge overturned his conviction.  The judge credited Garcia with a strong alibi, including documents that appeared to show that he was arrested in the Dominican Republic for traveling with false documents a day before the murder.  Garcia was released from imprisonment in Feb. 2007 after prosecutors declined to retry him.  [10/07]

Diomedes Polonia was convicted of attempted murder for allegedly shooting Thomas Hosford three times in the course of a robbery.  The victim said Freddy Polonia was his shooter.  Pedro “Freddy” Polonia is Diomedes brother and bears a strong resemblance to him.  When police visited Diomedes' apartment they believed they had found “Freddy.”  While in the hospital, the victim was shown fresh mug shots of Diomedes, whom he identified as “Freddy.”  Later, the victim further identified the wrong brother at a precinct station house line-up.

The actual Freddy signed a handwritten confession to the crime, but then reportedly fled to Puerto Rico.  He was later located in Massachusetts where he had been arrested for drug dealing and was making regular court appearances there.  A team of assistant DAs got in a car and drove up to Massachusetts, but Freddy invoked his right to counsel and silence.  Then, within days, Freddy fled again, reportedly on a plane out of Boston.  Diomedes' conviction was eventually overturned and he was released in Jan. 2003, but only after his Legal Aid attorneys logged 1300 hours on the case, and Diomedes spent over 5 and a half years in prison.  (Law.com) [1/07]

John Valletutti was sentenced to death for the murder of Pfc. Leo Conlon, a 30-year-old disabled paratrooper who was home on leave.  The murder occurred during an attempted robbery of a bar and grill at 5011 Avenue L in Brooklyn.  After another man, William Cronholm, was arrested for the crime, he first said he committed the robbery alone, but later said he committed the robbery with two others.  Cronholm said he implicated others solely to stop lengthy police questioning.  He said he had only recently met his two accomplices.  He did not know the name of the getaway driver, and the guy who accompanied him into the bar he only knew as “Johnny.”  At his trial Cronholm went back to his original story of committing the robbery alone.

Police investigated Cronholm's background and found out that he knew a John Valletutti, 19, who had once been arrested for car theft.  Thirty hours after taking Valletutti into custody, police had their second confession to the crime.  Valletutti maintained that he only confessed after he had been brutally assaulted by police.  No independent evidence connected Valletutti to the crime.  Cronholm testified in Valletutti's defense that he committed the robbery alone.  Alibi witnesses testified that Valletti was playing shuffleboard several miles from the scene.  After convicting Valletutti, the jury recommended mercy, but the trial judge sentenced him to death.  Prosecutor James McGough later said that while the jury was deliberating, he had offered Valletutti the opportunity to plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter, a charge that carried a maximum sentence of 15 years.  Valletutti declined the offer, insisting he was innocent.

Valletutti's conviction was reversed by the NY Court of Appeals which found that his confession was of doubtful reliability due to the evidence of the wounds he received while in police custody and to the lack of other evidence implicating him in the crime.  Charges against Valletutti were subsequently dropped and he was released from imprisonment in 1948.  (NY Times) (The Innocents)  [7/09]

Samuel Tito Williams was sentenced to death for the murder of 15-year-old Selma Graff.  Graff was fatally bludgeoned by an intruder about 2 a.m. in the bedroom of her home.  She lived at 143 East 96th St. in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn.  Graff's 9-year-old brother, Donald Graff, shared her room and struggled with the intruder before being clubbed into unconsciousness.  Donald described the intruder as a 5'5" white man who simpered or giggled.  The murder touched off one of New York City's biggest manhunts.

Five months after the murder, police arrested 18-year-old Williams for a series of alleged burglaries.  He reportedly was inclined to giggle.  After police questioning, Williams confessed to the Graff murder and identified a flashlight found at the scene as his own.  However, Williams was not a 5'5" white man, but a 6' tall black man.  Following Williams' confession, eight police officers involved with the case received rewards in the form of promotions, added pay, and certificates of commendation.  Eleven officers on the case were awarded $50 government bonds during an eight-course banquet sponsored by the Pitkin Avenue Merchants Association.

At trial the victim's brother identified the killer as a white man, but later said he “was all mixed up.”  Williams testified that his confession was obtained under duress.  He said detectives had was beaten him with “a blackjack, a rubber hose, and a club,” and that they also burned him with “lighted cigarettes and cigars.” The jury convicted Williams of murder with a recommendation of mercy.  However, trial judge Louis Goldstein imposed a death sentence.  Governor Dewey later commuted Williams' death sentence to life in prison.  In 1963 the U.S. Court of Appeals vacated Williams' conviction after ruling that his confession was coerced.  In 1973 New York City awarded Williams $120,000 for his false arrest and the malicious prosecution he suffered.  (NY Times)  [7/09]

After Elba Borrereo, a twenty-year-old practical nurse from Puerto Rico, was assaulted, Police Officer Frank Isola heard her scream and fired warning shots at the fleeing assailant.  Five hours later Isola encountered George Whitmore, Jr. on the street, but concluded that Whitmore was shorter and thinner than the assailant.  However, the next day, Isola and a detective spotted Whitmore again and took him to the precinct station for questioning.  At the station Borrereo viewed Whitmore through a peephole and identified him as the man who tried to rape her.  She had earlier only stated that the assailant tried to snatch her purse.  Whitmore had in his possession a picture of a young woman that a detective identified as Janice Wylie.  Wylie, 21, and Emily Hoffert, 23, had been stabbed to death 8 months previously in the apartment they shared on the East Side of Manhattan.  Wylie was a Newsweek magazine researcher and Hoffert was a teacher.  Newsweek offered a $10,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the murderer or murderers.

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Eric (Erick) Jackson, also known as Eric Knight, was convicted of setting a fire to a Waldbaum's Supermarket in Sheepshead Bay.  Six firefighters died in the blaze.  The investigation was plagued by public disputes between fire marshals and police arson investigators.  After an informant fingered him, Jackson was indicted in May 1979 on arson and murder charges.  Police said he confessed to setting the fire for $500.  Jackson was sentenced to 25 years to life.

The firefighters’ widows hired an attorney, Robert Sullivan, to bring a lawsuit for civil damages. In the course of preparing that lawsuit, Sullivan concluded that Jackson was innocent. Sullivan turned his efforts toward obtaining Jackson’s release.  He was later recognized by the New York State Bar Association for his efforts in the case.

In 1988, a judge overturned Jackson's conviction because prosecutors had withheld evidence from his defense.  This information included a fire marshal’s report that there had been “four separate and distinct fires” in the supermarket, of which only one caused the deaths of the firefighters. In addition, a New York City Police detective who had been involved in the investigation concluded that the fire was caused by an electrical short circuit, and said that he had repeatedly told this to the District Attorney’s office.

In 1994, Jackson was retried.  The defense maintained that Jackson's confession was coerced and that the fire was an accident resulting from faulty electrical wiring.  Jackson was acquitted and released after serving nearly ten years in prison.  (IP Arson) (Inevitable Error) (People v. Jackson)  [7/07]

Barry Gibbs was convicted of murdering Virginia Robertson, a prostitute whose strangled body was found dumped on the Belt Parkway near Mill Basin Bridge.  A witness, Peter Mitchell happened to be jogging on the bike path of the Parkway and said he saw the man who dumped the body.

Ten days later Gibbs was working as a counterman at a deli at the junction of Flatbush and Nostrand Aves.  Police detective Louis Eppolito came in and took a can of soda out of the fridge.  Gibbs told him, “That will be 75 cents.”  According to Gibbs, Eppolito got so PO'd that he had asked for money that he took him down to the precinct station and tried to beat him into confessing to Robertson's murder, a murder he had no idea about.  The witness, Mitchell, then identified Gibbs from a lineup as the man who dumped the body.  Mitchell had initially described the dumper as 5-foot, 6-inches tall with a moustache.  Gibbs was was 5-foot, 11-inches tall and had no facial hair.

In 1999, noted attorney Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project took up Gibbs case, but the case evidence file had mysteriously disappeared.  In 2005, agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency arrested Eppolito in Las Vegas and charged him with being a hit man for the Lucchese crime family.  In his home the Feds found Gibb's case file and when they contacted Mitchell, he told them Eppolito had coerced him into identifying Gibbs and that he “believed, and continues to believe, that Barry Gibbs is not the person he saw disposing of the victim's body.”  Gibbs was subsequently exonerated and released after more than 18 years in prison.  Eppolito was convicted of numerous charges including eight counts of murder.  (NY Daily News) (Fox News)  [4/10]

Hector Luis Gonzalez was charged with murdering Lemuel Cruz who was killed in a fight outside the Con Sabor Latino nightclub.  A witness placed him at the scene of the fight.  Gonzalez also had six bloodstains on his pants, five of which had markers consistent with the victim, but also with more than half the New York City population.  On this basis he was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison.

A subsequent federal investigation into the Latin Kings street gang produced testimony that Gonzalez was not involved in the murder.  DNA tests were performed to corroborate the testimony and the results showed that the bloodstains did not come from the murder victim but from two men wounded in the fight.  Gonzalez had been tending their wounds when their blood was transferred to his pants.  Gonzalez was released in 2002.  (IP)

Jonathan Wheeler-Whichard was convicted of the murder of Joseph Foster.  Foster was shot in the lobby of a crime-ridden building at 153 Marcus Garvey Blvd. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.  He had attacked Wheeler-Whichard earlier, and a witness said Wheeler-Whichard confessed to shooting Foster for revenge.  Another testified that she heard the two fighting.

Wheeler-Whichard was granted a judicial hearing in 2009 after one witness, now serving life on an unrelated murder, recanted.  The other was proven a liar when the real 911 caller was found.  The hearing judge, Justice Joseph K. McKay, reviewed this evidence and also heard from alibi witnesses not called at trial, including a correction officer.  McKay said there are several suspects in Foster's murder, including a brother of one of the witnesses who implicated Wheeler-Whichard.  He vacated Wheeler-Whichard's conviction on grounds of “actual innocence,” a ruling that appeared to be a first in the State of New York.  A Manhattan convict, Fernando Bermudez, also had his conviction overturned on the same grounds later the same year.  The rulings prevent the state from retrying Wheeler-Whichard or Bermudez.  (NY Daily News)  [4/10]

Derrick Bell was convicted of the robbery and shooting of Brentonol Moriah.  Moriah, who suffered enormous blood loss from a single shot to the thigh, spent the next 11 days under heavy sedation and in a near-comatose state.  Moriah knew Bell from having lived in the same rooming house with him for more than a year.  Nevertheless, at the scene of the crime, he did not name Bell, but instead described the perpetrator as a black male who wore a lemon-colored shirt.  Twelve days after the shooting, Moriah identified Bell.  The identification was the only evidence used to convict Bell.

Following his conviction, Bell submitted an affidavit from a neuropsychologist, who stated that Moriah's testimony contained “unequivocal evidence that he suffered from retrograde amnesia for the events predating the loss of consciousness,” that the amnesia was made worse by the medications he likely received, and that it was unlikely that he had regained full consciousness when he first named Bell.  Even a month after the shooting, Moriah was unable to recall his description of his assailant that he had given at the crime scene.

In 2007, the federal Second Circuit Court overturned Bell's conviction.  It ruled that Bell's defense lawyer was ineffective because he failed to inquire into the effects of blood loss and heavy sedation on the memory of the victim.  (Law.com)  [10/07]

Frank Pezzulich and Frank Sgelirrach were convicted of armed robbery charges.  On Mar. 22, 1919, seven pistol-wielding masked men robbed a rooming house at 36 Beach St. occupied by nine Croatians.  The victims were robbed of $1728, $85, $13, and $15.  One victim, Mike Zic, followed a group of robbers that went towards Varick St.  He caught one of the robbers, Frank Strolich, and held him for police.  Strolich denied his participation in the robbery and gave his address as 408 W. 24th St.  A detective went to the address, a rooming house, along with Frank Zic, the heaviest loser in the robbery.  There they met two Austrians, Frank Pezzulich and Frank Sgelirrach.  Zic identified both as robbers.  During the robbery two robbers' masks had allegedly slipped, allowing them to be identified.  Both Austrians admitted knowing Strolich, but denied being robbers.

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William Fisher was convicted of manslaughter for shooting David Feldman to death in a Harlem speakeasy.  Feldman's killing occurred at the Belden Social Club on the southeast corner of 124th Street and Second Avenue.  Three others were wounded during the incident, a “wild melee,” in which pistols roared and knives flashed.

Fisher was paroled in 1944.  In 1958 a state court overturned his conviction for two reasons:  (1) The trial prosecutor had introduced a gun into evidence as the murder weapon, which he knew had not been fired by Fisher.  (2) The prosecutor had also suppressed witness statements that clearly supported Fisher's innocence.  In 1986, Fisher was awarded $750,000 for his wrongful imprisonment.  (Google) (ISI)  [9/07]

Harlem teens Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise, ages 14 to 16, were accused of bludgeoning, raping, and leaving to die a 28-year-old female jogger in New York's Central Park.  The jogger was later learned to be Trish Meili, an investment banker at Salomon Brothers.  The media referred to the assault as a brutal “wilding” by out of control youth.

The teens had been picked up in a police sweep of the park and conveniently were already in custody when the victim was found.  All the teens except Salaam confessed to the crime on videotape.  The prosecution would admit 13 years later that the confessions “differed from one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime – who initiated the attack, who knocked the victim down, who undressed her, who struck her, who raped her, what weapons were used in the course of the assault and when the sequence of the events in the assault took place.”  The victim was knocked unconscious and was not able to identify any assailant.  All five were convicted at trial solely because of the confessions.

In 1990, following the convictions, DNA tests on semen found inside and on the victim, showed that it did match any of the Central Park Five.  The test results received little publicity and the recovered semen was attributed to a sixth “mystery” member of the gang.  In Jan. 2002, Matias Reyes, 31, a serial rapist, confessed to committing the crime alone.  DNA test results matched Reyes and the convictions of the five were vacated.  The five had already served their seven to thirteen year juvenile sentences.  At least three were denied parole for maintaining their innocence in the crime.  (American Justice) (IP1) (IP2) (IP3) (IP4) (IP5) (CWC)

David Lemus and Olmado Hidalgo were convicted of the murder of Marcus Peterson and the attempted murder of Jeffrey Craig.  Both victims were nightclub bouncers who were shot at the Palladium on East 14th St.  Prior to the shootings, the bouncers had an argument with their assailants.  During the argument, another man acted as a mediator between the two parties.  At trial, three witnesses identified Lemus and Hidalgo as the shooters.  The witnesses also identified Jose Figueroa as the mediator.

In Dec. 1992, Bernardo Rodriguez, a police informant and member of a Bronx gang named C&C, told police detectives that he had seen the Palladium shooting and that it was carried out by C&C members.  He reported that the gunmen were Joseph Pillot and Thomas Morales.  Two years later, Pillot told authorities in two separate interviews that he and Morales were responsible for the crime.  He said that they had shot the bouncers after being denied access to the club. (Pillot claimed that his gun jammed but that Morales's did not.)  In 1996, Pillot again testified to his involvement at a court hearing.

In 2000, during a federal investigation of C&C, Richard Feliciano, a former gang member, told the authorities that he was the mediator in the Palladium dispute and that Lemus and Hidalgo did not shoot the bouncers.  He named Morales as the shooter.  Several other witnesses backed up Feliciano's testimony, although some were gang members who may have had an incentive to turn on their own in the hopes of gaining leniency.  Two of the witnesses were deemed to be more credible.  In 2004, defense lawyers obtained prison records that showed that Figueroa, the mediator identified by trial witnesses, was in jail on the night of the shootings.  In 2005, Hidalgo's and Lemus's convictions were overturned.  Hidalgo was deported to the Dominican Republic.  Prosecutors opted to retry Lemus, for in a taped conversation, he had confessed to a woman that he committed the crime.  Lemus said that he exaggerated to impress the woman.  In 2007, Lemus was acquitted at retrial.  (NY Times) (NY Times #2)  [10/07]

Fernando Bermudez was convicted in 1992 of the murder of 16-year-old Raymond Blount.  Prior to the murder Blount had punched another teen named Efrain Lopez, allegedly after Lopez looked at him the wrong way.  This incident occurred in the Marc Ballroom, a Greenwich Village nightclub on Union Square West.  Lopez then approached an acquaintance in the club and told him what had happened.  Later, at 3 a.m., outside the club, Lopez and his friends encountered Blount and his friends.  As the two groups were getting ready to fight, Lopez's acquaintance asked him point out the puncher.  After Lopez pointed to Blount, the acquaintance ran up and fired a bullet into him, severing an artery.  Blount died in a hospital later that morning.

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Alice Crimmins was suspected of abduction murders of her son, Eddie, and daughter, Missy, in part because the investigator thought she did not show “proper” grief.  Some also thought Crimmins was too interested in her appearance.  The murders occurred on July 14, 1965 and the case became a tabloid sensation.  Police wiretapped her phone and were treated to titillating talk with her many sweethearts.  However, the tapes did not reveal any conspiracy with others.  The murders would have required at least two accomplices.  Police waged a campaign of harassment to break her.  They called up Crimmins' employers and repeatedly got her fired.  They also called her estranged husband when she was with another man.  The husband chased one of her paramours outside without giving him a chance to get his clothes.

Crimmins was eventually convicted of the murder of her son Eddie, and the manslaughter of her daughter because of the memories of witnesses, which grew over time.  One witness claimed to hear normal speaking voices from two hundred feet away.  The prosecution alleged Crimmins killed her daughter because she intruded on her and her lover when they were having sex, and then killed her son because he learned about the killing of his sister.  Crimmins was paroled in 1977.  (CrimeLibrary)  [5/07]

Lazzaro Burt was convicted of the murder of Wilfredo Cesacro.  A man on a street corner groped Cesacro's girlfriend, Lissette Saillant in East Elmhurst. The groper then shot Cesacro to death in the ensuing confrontation.  Saillant identified Burt as the shooter.  Saillant later said police had pressured her into making an identification she knew to be wrong.  In 2001, evidence surfaced that another man, Jarrett Smith, was Cesacro's killer.  Burt was released in 2002 and Smith was convicted of the murder.

About a year after Burt's release, Ronald Laws, a man who was shot in the leg, claimed that Burt had shot him.  Laws was the only witness to the alleged crime, there was no bullet casing or blood found where Laws said the shooting occurred, and it took Laws three months to identify Burt.  Burt spent 10 months in prison on assault charges.  Prior to Laws's claim, Burt had filed a $30 million suit against the state for the decade he spent wrongfully imprisoned.  At trial, Burt's defense argued that Laws had shot himself in the leg either accidentally or intentionally, and that the claim against Burt was an attempt to hustle him out of money.  A jury acquitted Burt.  (Pollard & Koenig, Attorneys)  [1/07]

When some jewelry vendors were returning to their hotel in Elmhurst from a gem show in Manhattan, four Latino men snatched three cases of Tahitian black pearls from them.  The pearls were valued at $1.5 million.   As they escaped, the thieves attempted to carjack an off duty police officer.  The officer managed to shoot his service weapon, a 9-millimeter Glock, before he was knocked unconscious.  He later told detectives later that he thought he had hit a robber who was grabbing at the barrel of the gun.

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