Black Man Exonerated after Serving 2 Years in Prison: Bad eyewitness ID + Incompetent Police + Prosecutor Misconduct = Racist Trial

From [HERE] and [HERE] The felony assault conviction of a Black man was reversed on Friday after a special investigation by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office revealed he was the victim of mistaken eyewitness testimony and innocent of the crime for which he had already served two years in prison. "I feel like somebody else," said Lawrence Williams, 36, who two years ago was slapped with a 10-year sentence for assault and has fought for exoneration ever since. "It's like an out of body experience for me to be free."

Williams was locked up at Rikers for three months as he awaited trial for the 2008 stickup over a gold chain. He then spent 26 months in an upstate prison. Private investigators managed to locate the real gunman, whose DNA matched a tee-shirt found at the scene.

The man, Taevon Hutchinson, confessed to the crime to private investigators in February 2012, then confirmed the confession to a police detective over the phone. But his current whereabouts are unknown. It's unclear whether he’ll be prosecuted for the shooting, sources said. Complicating matters, despite the exoneration, court papers say the victim "remains adamant" that he correctly fingered Williams.

Williams always claimed he was at his Staten Island home with his wife when the shooting took place inside a Coney Island tenement. Nobody seems to know how Williams became a suspect.

A detective wrote in a 2008 police report that the victim, Alberto Ortiz, brought up Williams's names after hearing it around the neighborhood. The detective later conceded to DA investigators the account "was not correct,” and claimed the name was provided by the victim's aunt. The aunt denied that. But Ortiz fingered Williams in a photo array, then the police lineup.

During the initial investigation, police believed Hutchinson was a cohort in the robbery and issued a warrant for his arrest. But when Hutchinson was nabbed for fare beating in May 2009, detectives failed to interview him.

At the time, Williams was out on bail awaiting trial for the shooting he did not commit. "It's a terrible thing,” Supreme court Justice Michael Gary told Williams Friday when he officially sealed the case. “The justice system should apologize to Mr. Williams."

The exoneration was the latest in a string of troubled cases handled by the office of Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, that were marred by faulty testimony, aggressive police tactics and, in some cases, misconduct by prosecutors. But the case of the Brooklyn man, Lawrence Williams, also set its own precedent: it was the first felony case dealt with by a special unit that Mr. Hynes set up a year ago to root out miscarriages of justice.

Like prosecutors across the country, Mr. Hynes created the unit to investigate defendants’ claims of innocence, calling it the conviction integrity unit. Many other prosecutors, like Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, are newly elected and investigating the wrongs of previous leaders. But Mr. Hynes, who has been in office since 1989, is in the uncomfortable position of investigating his office’s own mistakes. Mr. Williams, who was released on bail in April when prosecutors first acknowledged that he was probably innocent, showed little emotion during a quick hearing in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Friday.

After the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office was alerted, its Conviction Integrity Unit took up the probe and agreed Williams had been wrongfully convicted, consenting to his release back in April.

The judge said that should the father-of-three decide to pursue compensation for his ordeal, "I certainly wish you success with that."

An emotional Williams, who had a lengthy rap sheet before the wrongful conviction, didn't detail his future plans, including whether he plans to sue, saying he's focusing on the moment.

Williams was locked up at Rikers for three months as he awaited trial for the 2008 stickup over a gold chain. He then spent 26 months in an upstate prison.

Private investigators managed to locate the real gunman, whose DNA matched a tee-shirt found at the scene.

The man, Taevon Hutchinson, confessed to the crime to private investigators in February 2012, then confirmed the confession to a police detective over the phone. But his current whereabouts are unknown.

It's unclear whether he’ll be prosecuted for the shooting, sources said. Complicating matters, despite the exoneration, court papers say the victim "remains adamant" that he correctly fingered Williams.

After the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office was alerted, its Conviction Integrity Unit took up the probe and agreed Williams had been wrongfully convicted, consenting to his release back in April.

Williams always claimed he was at his Staten Island home with his wife when the shooting took place inside a Coney Island tenement.

Nobody seems to know how Williams became a suspect.

A detective wrote in a 2008 police report that the victim, Alberto Ortiz, brought up Williams's names after hearing it around the neighborhood. The detective later conceded to DA investigators the account "was not correct,” and claimed the name was provided by the victim's aunt. The aunt denied that.

But Ortiz fingered Williams in a photo array, then the police lineup.

During the initial investigation, police believed Hutchinson was a cohort in the robbery and issued a warrant for his arrest. But when Hutchinson was nabbed for fare beating in May 2009, detectives failed to interview him.

At the time, Williams was out on bail awaiting trial for the shooting he did not commit. "It's a terrible thing,” Supreme court Justice Michael Gary told Williams Friday when he officially sealed the case. “The justice system should apologize to Mr. Williams."

The judge said that should the father-of-three decide to pursue compensation for his ordeal, "I certainly wish you success with that."

An emotional Williams, who had a lengthy rap sheet before the wrongful conviction, didn't detail his future plans, including whether he plans to sue, saying he's focusing on the moment.

“I lost a lot,” he said in an interview after the hearing. “I have issues now that I deal with. You know, personal issues. I had a family. I lost my mother in this incarceration. I lost a lot. I’m hanging on a string right now.”

“One of the functions of the prosecutors is to monitor the systems they preside over to detect miscarriages of justice,” said Samuel R. Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan who is the editor of the National Registry of Exonerations. “Prosecutors are the central actors. They run the show. They are the people who have the most opportunities and the best ability to detect and correct wrongful convictions.”

John P. O’Mara, a longtime prosecutor in the Brooklyn office, leads Mr. Hynes’s unit. A dozen other investigations are under way, according to prosecutors.

When Mr. Williams left the courthouse on Friday with his name cleared, he bought a sandwich with his wife and went to a nearby park to watch the children play. But on the very day that he was released, he was roped back into the system. A police officer gave him a summons for sitting in the park without a minor.

“That was a pill to swallow,” Mr. Williams said. “I’ve been away from this for a little while. I would just like to see life happening. You all are going to take this from me too? I don’t know.”