Brooklyn man cleared of murder charges from 2006 fire

From the NY Daily News:

BY Oren Yaniv

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Friday, May 16, 2014, 8:55 PM

Brooklyn prosecutors officially cleared a man of murder charges relating to a 2006 inferno he was accused of igniting based on an uncorroborated account by someone who claimed he overheard him confess.

Samuel Martinez, 40, thanked his lawyer Amy Rameau Friday and expressed hope the real perpetrator responsible for the four tragic deaths will be caught.

The expected outcome came three weeks after the shaky prosecution collapsed, which was first reported by the Daily News.

Other than our main witness,” assistant district attorney John Holmes said in Brooklyn Supreme Court, “there are no witnesses or eyewitnesses, no physical or other evidence that helps to support that assertion.”

hat witness had claimed he was in a bodega months after the fire when he heard Martinez admit his role to a pal.

 

The only other pillar of the 2012 indictment was a prison snitch who became compromised after a history of delusions and homicidal ideations was uncovered.

The blaze in a Crown Heights tenement claimed the life of a mother, her two young children and another female resident.

Martinez was alleged to have started it after a dispute with a drug dealer. But the fire was one of a string of arsons in the area for which he was never connected.

“The families of the victims — I hope they have justice,” Martinez told the judge.

He is still jailed for an unrelated assault case in the Bronx but his mother said they hope he will soon be able to make bail.

Ken Thompson's Review of Scarcella Cases Produces Its First Three Exonerations

Sorry this is so late. Better late than never, right?

From the village voice:

By Albert Samaha Tue., May 6 2014 at 12:05 PM

 

Last year, then-Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes announced that his office would review around 50 cases involving former-detective Louis Scarcella. Scarcella's alleged dirty tricks included coercing confessions, coaching witnesses to lie, and hiding evidence favorable to a suspect.
Hynes, a 24-year incumbent, lost re-election in the fall largely because of his role in overseeing those and other cases involving possible prosecutorial misconduct. The man who replaced him, Ken Thompson, campaigned on cleaning up Hynes's mess. Within his first five months on the job, he exonerated three inmates wrongfully convicted during the '80s and '90s. Those cases, however, were not part of the Scarcella files.

So last month, around 50 protesters took the steps of city hall, calling on Thompson to speed up his review of the Scarcella cases. Perhaps the voices got to him or perhaps the timing was coincidental. But, as the New York Times reported on Monday night, Thompson has announced the first three exonerees from the Scarcella review: Darryl Austin, Alvena Jennette, and Robert Hill.

Austin and Jennette had been convicted of killing Ronnie Durant in 1985. The investigation went nowhere for two years. Then Scarcella took over the case and he quickly located an eye witness: Theresa Gomez claimed to have seen Austin and Jennette commit the murder.
Meanwhile, prosecutors did not disclose to defense attorneys a police interview with two witnesses familiar with the crime who said that Austin and Jennette were not the killers.
Even though Gomez's testimony included details inconsistent with the physical evidence, it was enough to persuade the jury.

Gomez, the New York Times revealed last year, offered damning witness statements for six murder cases that Scarcella worked on.

Hill's case was one of those as well.