Man imprisoned 29 years is exonerated; DA cites fake murder confession by teen 'fed false facts'
Updated: After news Tuesday that Brooklyn’s new district attorney is seeking to exonerate two men convicted of a 1985 murder, the criminal justice system moved with lightning speed.
On Wednesday, when an assistant to DA Kenneth Thompson asked a Brooklyn judge to vadate the convictions, he did, reports the New York Times (reg. req.).
One of the two, Willie Stuckey, died in prison over a decade ago from a heart attack at age 35. But David McCallum, 45, was in court to hear that he had been cleared after 29 years in prison. He reacted with “utter joy” and disbelief, his attorney, Oscar Michelen, said, when told earlier he could be released as soon as Wednesday, according to the Associated Press and the New York Daily News.
The two were convicted based on confessions they made as teenagers to police concerning the abduction and slaying of Nathan Blenner, 20. No other evidence tied them to the crime, Thompson told the AP by phone on Tuesday.
“We’ve concluded that the confessions were false, and they were false in large part because these 16-year-olds were fed false facts,” said Thompson.
He has previously disavowed eight other convictions since starting work as Brooklyn’s new DA earlier this year, but this is the first such case centered on a confession by the defendants determined by the DA’s office to be false.
A review of dozens of other homicide cases linked to a single detective whose work has been questioned began under Thompson’s predecessor, Charles Hynes, and widened earlier this year, the New York Post reported. The detective, Louis Scarcella, testified last month in a related civil case, as detailed by the New York Times (reg. req.).
See also:
ABAJournal.com (Feb. 2014): “Without involving counsel, NYC agrees to pay $6.4M to man who claimed he was framed by detective”
ABAJournal.com (April 2014): “Despite out-of-state vacation alibi, man spent nearly 25 years in prison for murder he didn’t commit”
ABAJournal.com (Sept. 2014): “Man exonerated by own research gets $13M for wrongful conviction in rabbi slaying”
New York Law Journal (sub. req.): “Unit Confronts ‘Staggering’ Conviction Review Caseload”
Updated at 4:30 p.m. to include and accord with news of exoneratons from New York Times.
