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Man cleared of NYC murder after 25 years in prison

Hatuey

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Man cleared of NYC murder after 25 years in prison

The exoneration, first reported by the Daily News, comes amid scrutiny of Brooklyn prosecutors' process for reviewing questionable convictions, scrutiny that comes partly from the new district attorney, Kenneth Thompson. He said in a statement that after a months-long review, he decided to drop the case against Fleming because of "key alibi facts that place Fleming in Florida at the time of the murder."

From the start, Fleming told authorities he had been in Orlando when a friend, Darryl "Black" Rush, was shot to death in Brooklyn early on Aug. 15, 1989. Authorities suggested the shooting was motivated by a dispute over money.


Fleming had plane tickets, videos and postcards from his trip, said his lawyers, Anthony Mayol and Taylor Koss. But prosecutors at the time suggested he could have made a quick round-trip plane jaunt to be in New York, and a woman testified that she had seen him shoot Rush. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison and was due to have his first parole hearing soon.

I have to wonder when prosecutors and judges that send men to jail for 20+ years on bs evidence will be tried for their abuses of the legal system? When will police officers who shoot unarmed suspects be tried for AT LEAST some sort negligence? As time goes by - we will see more and more of these wrongful convictions. This is no longer a situation of a few people being wrongfully convicted. This has now become a statistic. Thousands of people have been exonerated - there are still tens of thousands who may have served their sentences even though they were innocent. The prison complex is one that 1% of the country's population passes through every year. We must start taking measures the ensure innocents don't have to go through it.
 
Man cleared of NYC murder after 25 years in prison



I have to wonder when prosecutors and judges that send men to jail for 20+ years on bs evidence will be tried for their abuses of the legal system? When will police officers who shoot unarmed suspects be tried for AT LEAST some sort negligence? As time goes by - we will see more and more of these wrongful convictions. This is no longer a situation of a few people being wrongfully convicted. This has now become a statistic. Thousands of people have been exonerated - there are still tens of thousands who may have served their sentences even though they were innocent. The prison complex is one that 1% of the country's population passes through every year. We must start taking measures the ensure innocents don't have to go through it.

Or that one person gets 15 years for possession of 10 pounds of marijuana while a guy who rapes his toddler gets none.
 
Or that one person gets 15 years for possession of 10 pounds of marijuana while a guy who rapes his toddler gets none.

Now, the man with the marijuana, that is a man I understand.
 
I have to wonder when prosecutors and judges that send men to jail for 20+ years on bs evidence will be tried for their abuses of the legal system? When will police officers who shoot unarmed suspects be tried for AT LEAST some sort negligence? As time goes by - we will see more and more of these wrongful convictions. This is no longer a situation of a few people being wrongfully convicted. This has now become a statistic. Thousands of people have been exonerated - there are still tens of thousands who may have served their sentences even though they were innocent. The prison complex is one that 1% of the country's population passes through every year. We must start taking measures the ensure innocents don't have to go through it.

Still too many people simply don't want to know how many people are wrongfully convicted.
 
Or that one person gets 15 years for possession of 10 pounds of marijuana while a guy who rapes his toddler gets none.

10 pounds is a ****load of marijuana though.
 
Man cleared of NYC murder after 25 years in prison



I have to wonder when prosecutors and judges that send men to jail for 20+ years on bs evidence will be tried for their abuses of the legal system? When will police officers who shoot unarmed suspects be tried for AT LEAST some sort negligence? As time goes by - we will see more and more of these wrongful convictions. This is no longer a situation of a few people being wrongfully convicted. This has now become a statistic. Thousands of people have been exonerated - there are still tens of thousands who may have served their sentences even though they were innocent. The prison complex is one that 1% of the country's population passes through every year. We must start taking measures the ensure innocents don't have to go through it.

There need to be more severe and more consistently applied penalties to prosecutors and police who deliberately withhold information and unethically pursue prosecutions.
 
No justice system is going to be perfect. Innocent people are going to be wrongly convicted. That being said it would be far less likely to happen should prosecutors and police be less worried about getting a conviction and more worried about getting the right person convicted justly.
 
Man cleared of NYC murder after 25 years in prison



I have to wonder when prosecutors and judges that send men to jail for 20+ years on bs evidence will be tried for their abuses of the legal system? When will police officers who shoot unarmed suspects be tried for AT LEAST some sort negligence? As time goes by - we will see more and more of these wrongful convictions. This is no longer a situation of a few people being wrongfully convicted. This has now become a statistic. Thousands of people have been exonerated - there are still tens of thousands who may have served their sentences even though they were innocent. The prison complex is one that 1% of the country's population passes through every year. We must start taking measures the ensure innocents don't have to go through it.

In Texas he wouldn't have to worry about being compensated. He would be dead by now.
 
In Texas he wouldn't have to worry about being compensated. He would be dead by now.

Cameron Todd Willingham. Rest in Peace.

Governor Perry may have done enough to make voters forget his cover up, I can only hope he will one day have to answer to a higher authority. In this life or the next.
 
Sounds like another case of false eyewitness identification. The outrage against this case is justified, but there are steps being taken to prevent this type of this from happening again. The Innocence Project is one source of suppot for people already falsely imprisoned. There has been an extraordinary amount of research done in the last 20 years regarding eyewitness reliability/validity and the use of experts on such testimony are more frequently used in court now. This research has also been influencing police protocols regarding identification procedures.

The professor I worked under in graduate school was an expert witness in these types of cases (among others) so I got to help him prepare his testimonies. It is amazing what you see what some officers do and disregard when reading through the case files.
 
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Not to mention one of the biggest changes in the last few decades: DNA Analysis. When Texas began releasing men who had served decades in prison on false rape charges, it became apparent that eyewitness accounts were completely worthless and did nothing, usually, except flame the stokes of the jury's anger.

Few things could be worse than doing years in a Texas Prison for rape (god forbid of a minor). Doing years in a Texas Prison for a rape you didn't commit has to be one of them.
 
real shame here... poor guy.. glad at least he can reclaim his life..
 
man runs the government. man is(and will always be) flawed. ergo government(e.i. the prison system) is(and will always be) flawed. ergo(i.e. et al) will be flawed is what I'm trying to say
 
Sounds like another case of false eyewitness identification.

You should read the article again. The prosecutor deliberately kept information that would have exonerated the man.
 
No justice system is going to be perfect. Innocent people are going to be wrongly convicted. That being said it would be far less likely to happen should prosecutors and police be less worried about getting a conviction and more worried about getting the right person convicted justly.
Agreed... and they would be more concerned with getting the right person if they didn't enjoy immunity.
 
You should read the article again. The prosecutor deliberately kept information that would have exonerated the man.

I doubt there is a conviction by a jury if there wasn't a false identification. It's one of the most powerful pieces of evidence. If you want anyone to blame for information being withheld at trial, blame the judge. The judge is the one who decides whether or not evidence reaches trial. If a prosecutor purposefully withheld exonerating evidence they'd be disbarred or be in jail.
 
I doubt there is a conviction by a jury if there wasn't a false identification. It's one of the most powerful pieces of evidence. If you want anyone to blame for information being withheld at trial, blame the judge. The judge is the one who decides whether or not evidence reaches trial. If a prosecutor purposefully withheld exonerating evidence they'd be disbarred or be in jail.

The eyewitness account would have been proven false by the evidence kept from the defense.
 
There need to be more severe and more consistently applied penalties to prosecutors and police who deliberately withhold information and unethically pursue prosecutions.

Agreed. Individuals need to be held personally accountable with criminal charges. Currently the government settles a lawsuit and the guilty individuals responsible for the wrongful conviction go unpunished. Too many DAs appear to care more about their conviction stats for the next election than doing what is right and just.

There also needs to be tighter rules on police procedures used to make a case. Witness identifications can be significantly more accurate with better procedures. Also, all interrogations of suspects should be video recorded. Such measures were proposed in California and not surprisingly the police unions successfully lobbied to kill them.
 
Agreed. Individuals need to be held personally accountable with criminal charges. Currently the government settles a lawsuit and the guilty individuals responsible for the wrongful conviction go unpunished. Too many DAs appear to care more about their conviction stats for the next election than doing what is right and just.

There also needs to be tighter rules on police procedures used to make a case. Witness identifications can be significantly more accurate with better procedures. Also, all interrogations of suspects should be video recorded. Such measures were proposed in California and not surprisingly the police unions successfully lobbied to kill them.

It's worse than that because most ADA's are (understandably) not elected, they are civil servants. The paramount metric used to push promotion and other advancement is conviction rate which encourages, in my opinion, unethical behavior in pursuit of that big numerical tally.
 
I doubt there is a conviction by a jury if there wasn't a false identification. It's one of the most powerful pieces of evidence. If you want anyone to blame for information being withheld at trial, blame the judge. The judge is the one who decides whether or not evidence reaches trial....

That is true only if the judge is informed that the evidence exists.
 
......If a prosecutor purposefully withheld exonerating evidence they'd be disbarred or be in jail.
Only in theory, not in practice.

"A former Texas district attorney agreed Friday to serve 10 days in jail for withholding evidence that could have stopped an innocent man from going to prison for nearly 25 years — apparently the first time a prosecutor has been sent to jail for concealing evidence helpful to the defense.

Former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson agreed to a plea deal that will also require him to pay a $500 fine and complete 500 hours of community service after state District Judge Kelly Moore found him in contempt of court for telling a trial judge in 1987 that he had no exculpatory evidence to hand over to lawyers for Michael Morton, whose conviction in his wife's death was overturned in 2011.

Charges of tampering with evidence — which could have meant 10 years in prison — were dropped as part of the deal, under which Anderson will be disbarred........
Gerald Goldstein, an attorney for the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic affiliated with the Yeshiva University Law School, said Anderson's sentence, however brief, was precedent-shattering.

"This is the first time in the country's history that a prosecutor has been found guilty of criminal contempt, will go to jail and be stripped of their law license," Goldstein told NBC station KXAN of Austin.

Pete Williams of NBC News contributed to this report.

Watch US News crime videos on NBCNews.com
First published November 8th 2013, 4:50 pm

Note that the guilty DA got 10 days in jail, the innocent defendant served about 24 years in prison.
 
You should read the article again. The prosecutor deliberately kept information that would have exonerated the man.

Yup, he had a receipt from a Hotel in Florida which showed he was there, and not in New York, when the murder happened. The prosecutor buried that evidence, which would have exonerated the man. The prosecutor belongs in prison himself..... In the general population.
 
Man cleared of NYC murder after 25 years in prison



I have to wonder when prosecutors and judges that send men to jail for 20+ years on bs evidence will be tried for their abuses of the legal system? When will police officers who shoot unarmed suspects be tried for AT LEAST some sort negligence? As time goes by - we will see more and more of these wrongful convictions. This is no longer a situation of a few people being wrongfully convicted. This has now become a statistic. Thousands of people have been exonerated - there are still tens of thousands who may have served their sentences even though they were innocent. The prison complex is one that 1% of the country's population passes through every year. We must start taking measures the ensure innocents don't have to go through it.

Rich people and government officials are above the law.
 
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