Whose life HASN'T Scarcella ruined? I mean honestly...

Convicts Say New York City Detective Framed Them

NEW YORK April 9, 2014 (AP)

By TOM HAYS Associated Press 

 

A group of convicts who say they were framed by a corrupt New York City detective urged a New York City prosecutor Wednesday to speed up an ongoing review of potentially tainted murder investigations, some decades old.

The demand came at a rally on the steps of City Hall, one day after a Brooklyn man convicted of murder in 1989 and serving a sentence of 25 years to life, Jonathan Fleming, was released on new evidence that established he was in Florida around the time of the killing.

"Just yesterday, an old man who used to be a young man was freed," said Lonnie Soury, one of the organizers. "We've been asked to be patient. But I say, we have been patient for decades."

The review of several murder cases investigated by the now-retired detective, Louis Scarcella, began last year after another man convicted of murder was released on new evidence that Scarcella had coached a witness to pick him out of a lineup. Since then, other convicts have renewed allegations that Scarcella fabricated confessions, manipulated witnesses and intimidated them.

Newly elected Brooklyn district attorney Ken Thompson, who came into office promising to make addressing allegations of wrongful convictions a priority, said in statement Wednesday that a revamped conviction review unit remains hard at work.

"While we understand the need to work quickly, we are not willing to sacrifice thoroughness for speed in the pursuit of justice," he said.

Some of the men at Wednesday's rally were paroled after serving lengthy sentences, but still seek vindication. They and their supporters wore caps emblazoned with "Wrongfully Convicted" on the front and "Victims of Detective Scarcella" on the side.

Derrick Hamilton, who was paroled in 2011 after doing 21 years for a 1991 murder, claims Scarcella coerced an eyewitness to change her testimony and implicate him in the killing.

"I feel violated, humiliated," Hamilton told the crowd. "How long must we wait for justice?"

Scarcella has denied any wrongdoing. His lawyers, Alan Abramson and Joel Cohen, noted that so far, no one else investigated by their client has been cleared in court. The former detective wasn't involved in the Fleming case.

"We welcome the review," Abramson said. "Let the unit do its work."

 

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/convicts-york-city-detective-framed-23262186

Scarcella gives Hynes and Vecchione a run for their money for the worst person in law enforcement award

I sincerely hope that as more and more wrongful convictions come to light there is some serious discussion amongst our policy makers regarding accountability. This is an epidemic in not only our city, but our country. Although I will say, the sheer volume of wrongful conviction cases continuing to come out of Brooklyn is astounding. 

In any event, here's two recent  NYT articles relating to Scumcella:

Notes Found in Review of Police Work Could Exonerate 2 Convicted in Killing

“Scarcella framed me; that I knew already. But that they had the name of another person as the actual murderer? That had me in shock.” — Alvena Jennette

DAMON WINTER / THE NEW YORK TIMES

By FRANCES ROBLES

April 8, 2014

A review of homicide convictions stemming from the work of Louis Scarcella, a Brooklyn detective accused of framing suspects, has turned up a stash of old handwritten police notes that could exonerate two men convicted of a murder in 1985. One of the men served 21 years in prison; the other died behind bars.

The notes were in a file tucked away at Police Headquarters and were written by the first detective assigned to the case. They show that two previously undisclosed eyewitnesses saw the September 1985 killing of a man named Ronnie Durant, but they named killers different from the two men who were convicted. The notebook could have affected the verdict; not turning it over to defense lawyers decades ago is a serious violation of the rules of criminal procedure, experts said.

It was the first significant revelation disclosed by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office in the 11 months since it began a wide-ranging investigation into the work of Mr. Scarcella, who worked the streets of Brooklyn in the 1980s and 1990s and is now retired. One of the most successful detectives in New York City history, he has been accused of a variety of infractions, including roughing up suspects, inventing confessions and even pulling informers out of prison to smoke crack and visit prostitutes or girlfriends.

Questions about Mr. Scarcella prompted the previous district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, to review all the murder cases in which Mr. Scarcella’s work resulted in a conviction. But the revelations were so damaging that they contributed to Mr. Hynes’s surprise defeat in both the primary and general election last year. He was beaten both times — once running as a Democrat and once as a Republican — by Kenneth P. Thompson. 

“Our prompt disclosure in this case to the defense counsel and to the court reflects our determination to review these cases thoroughly and with integrity,” Mr. Thompson, who took office on Jan. 1, said in a statement.

Mr. Thompson’s office disclosed the evidence in a letter to Brooklyn’s chief administrative judge, Matthew J. D’Emic. The letter, signed by Assistant District Attorney Jessica Wilson of the Conviction Review Unit, said the matter was under investigation and did not say what action prosecutors would take.

Mr. Durant, who was known as Pepper, was killed around 12:45 a.m. on Sept. 10, 1985. Witnesses said two men chased him from a spot known for drug dealing on Park Place in Crown Heights, shot him and stole the money from his pockets. He was 34.

The first witness to talk to the police was the victim’s nephew, who blamed two brothers, Alvena Jennette and Darryl Austin — known as Uni — and another man who was not charged. The case was dormant for two years because the district attorney had doubts about the nephew’s character, records show.

The notes show that the first detective assigned to the case, Bobby Jones, interviewed a witness who said that the brothers helped rob Mr. Durant but that another man shot him. Another witness interviewed seven months after the killing said Mr. Jennette and Mr. Austin were standing on a nearby stoop during the shooting but had nothing to do with it, the notes revealed.

The witness implicated another person and even gave Detective Jones the name and whereabouts of the person who had the gun.

“Uni was there, but he did not do anything,” Detective Jones wrote after showing a group of photos to the witness. 

“Alvina Jannette standing on stoop. Did not do anything.”

Mr. Scarcella, who in interviews has denied any wrongdoing, inherited the Durant case two years after the murder because it had gone cold. He solved it by producing testimony from Teresa Gomez, whom he had used in several prior cases. She identified the two brothers as the killers. With her testimony corroborating that of the victim’s nephew, and no mention of other witnesses, charges were filed. Both men were convicted and sentenced to 18 years to life in prison.

Mr. Jennette, 50, served almost 21 years in prison for the robbery and murder of Mr. Durant before he was released on parole in 2007. His co-defendant and brother died in prison at age 37.

Their case was reopened last year after The New York Times revealed that the two men were convicted largely on the word of Ms. Gomez, who had become a witness for Mr. Scarcella in as many as six murder cases.

“Scarcella framed me; that I knew already,” Mr. Jennette said. “But that they had the name of another person as the actual murderer? That had me in shock.”

Detective Jones, who could not be located for comment, testified at the trial and never mentioned these witnesses, Mr. Jennette said in a recent interview.

According to two sources familiar with the investigation, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office file did not contain the notebook belonging to Mr. Jones. It was not immediately clear who failed to turn it over to the district attorney’s office, or whether the prosecutor ever knew about it.

Lawyers for Mr. Scarcella, Alan M. Abramson and Joel S. Cohen, said there was no evidence that Mr. Scarcella ever had the notebook, and accused The Times of engaging in sensational coverage.

“Responsibility for turning potentially exculpatory material to the defense rests solely with the district attorney’s office and not with the case detective,” the lawyers said. “The coverage of Detective Scarcella has been fraught with factual errors, innuendo and misrepresentations.”

Since the 1963 Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors have been obligated to share exculpatory information with defense lawyers. Violations of this rule can cause convictions to be overturned.

Although prosecutors deemed responsible can be disciplined for such violations, it almost never occurs.

The assistant district attorney in the case, Eric Bjorneby, is now a judge in Nassau County. New York State judicial conduct rules say Mr. Bjorneby can still be disciplined.

Mr. Bjorneby was on vacation overseas and could not be reached for comment, a court spokesman said.

The responsibility to turn the information over fell squarely on the prosecutor, even if the information was at Police Headquarters, legal experts said.

“You can’t just stick your head in the sand and say if you don’t know it, you don’t have any obligation,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert at New York University School of Law.

Mr. Jennette’s lawyer, Pierre Sussman, called the failure to disclose the evidence “reprehensible.”

 

Mr. Sussman represents another man, David Ranta, who in February received a $6.4 million settlement from the city after he served 23 years in prison in a murder case lawyers say Mr. Scarcella largely manufactured. The case was considered so egregious that the city comptroller settled it before a lawsuit was filed and without consulting the city attorney.

On Monday, the Brooklyn district attorney announced that a Harvard Law School professor, Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., had been hired to head the new Conviction Review Unit.

“They have information that could exonerate people, but they don’t give it to you,” Mr. Jennette said. “There are probably thousands of cases like mine.”

 

Prisoner to Face Parole Board as Questions Grow About His Conviction 

 By: Francis Robles

April 13, 2014 

Robert Hill, a former Crown Heights drug dealer, was convicted of murder in 1988 on the word of a serial eyewitness hooked on crack.

Three other witnesses who insist Mr. Hill is innocent recently resurfaced, and defense lawyers have raised new challenges to the credibility of another witness who testified at the trial.

With questions about his conviction growing and with 28 of his 53 years spent behind bars, Mr. Hill is now among a growing number of convicts who hope the New York State Board of Parole will review their cases with a measure of skepticism and show mercy.

On Tuesday, the board will hear a petition from Mr. Hill. For the hearing, Mr. Hill’s lawyers presented an application explaining that Mr. Hill’s case is one of about 50 reopened last year by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office after allegations of misconduct against a police detective, Louis Scarcella, cast a shadow over convictions in many of Mr. Scarcella’s cases.

The petition and others like it have thrust the board into what some experts say is an awkward and perhaps inappropriate role. As more convictions come under scrutiny for police and prosecutorial misconduct, commissioners are being asked to revisit factual questions that are typically beyond the scope of their mandate.

With no action yet by the district attorney in the case of Mr. Hill, he and his lawyers are hoping the Parole Board will act.

“I am very frustrated,” Mr. Hill said in a telephone interview from Fishkill Correctional Facility. “After all this came out, I thought that I would be declared innocent from the court soon. I haven’t heard nothing. I’m stressed out.”

Although the parole strategy could work — one inmate in a Scarcella case was recently released after a petition similar to Mr. Hill’s — Parole Board members have voiced resistance.

In January, two parole commissioners balked when the state attorney general’s Conviction Review Bureau urged the board to release a Nassau County man, Ronald Bower, who had been convicted of sex offenses. One commissioner asked why prosecutors did not have the “fortitude” to exonerate the man and instead decided to saddle the Parole Board with making the tough call.

“It does put the Parole Board in a very bad position,” one of the parole commissioners, Lisa Beth Elovich, said in January, according to minutes of the hearing published by The Long Island Press.

The parole was granted, and Mr. Bower was released after 21 years in prison.

Although the parole board historically required inmates to express remorse for their crimes, an increasing awareness of wrongful convictions has opened the door for inmates to assert their innocence.

At his hearing, Mr. Hill will have to explain why he expressed remorse at two prior parole hearings. A lawyer for Mr. Hill said he did so because he believed that was a requirement for release. “It is unfortunate that our system of justice at times leads people to believe they have no choice but to admit to things they have not done,” said the lawyer, Sharon Katz, who is working free on Mr. Hill’s case.

The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision does not track the number of inmates who claim innocence at their hearings. A spokesman for the agency declined to comment.

In January 1987, when Mr. Hill was a drug dealer known as Bobby Love, a man named Donald Manboardes turned up at Kings County Hospital with gunshot wounds. All the police knew was that someone had flagged a taxi in Crown Heights, put the wounded Mr. Manboardes in the car, and sent him on his own to get medical assistance. Mr. Manboardes died.

Mr. Hill was arrested a few months later and charged in the killing, after an unhappy customer of Mr. Hill’s told Detective Scarcella that she saw Mr. Hill shoot the victim on a Rogers Avenue corner and put him into a taxi with the help of a woman and two men.

The witness, Teresa Gomez, got the color of the cab and a few other important details wrong. When she took the stand in court, she was belligerent and answered basic biographical questions about herself incorrectly, the trial transcript shows.

Even the prosecutor once described her as a woman ravaged from head to toe by crack whom no one would ever find credible.

The jury did not know that Ms. Gomez had already testified as an eyewitness against Mr. Hill in a previous murder trial, in which he was acquitted.

She later testified against Mr. Hill’s two brothers, and was known to have offered information on countless neighborhood crimes in exchange for cash, according to former police supervisors in Brooklyn. In all, prosecutors say, she provided crucial testimony in at least six homicide cases, all of which were assigned to Detective Scarcella.

The doubts about Mr. Scarcella’s reliance on the same witness prompted Legal Aid Society lawyers to look further into the background of another woman who was a witness at Mr. Hill’s trial and who testified she overheard him boast that he had killed once before and could kill again.

The Legal Aid lawyers discovered that the woman testified in another trial less than a year after Mr. Hill’s conviction and that, in testimony very similar to what she gave against Mr. Hill, she told jurors that the defendant had said he had killed before and would kill again.

Both that witness and Ms. Gomez are now dead.

Mr. Hill admits that he put the dying man in a cab, but denies that he murdered him.

“I never killed nobody,” said Mr. Hill, who expressed regret for his past lifestyle.

Mr. Hill’s case was reopened last May as The New York Times was investigating the case and others in which Mr. Scarcella was accused of misconduct.

By then Mr. Scarcella had been accused by the Brooklyn district attorney of manufacturing a case against David Ranta, a man who spent 23 years in prison for a murder he almost certainly did not commit. Court records show Mr. Scarcella has been accused of making up confessions, roughing up suspects and taking informers out of jail and letting them smoke crack.

Mr. Scarcella has denied wrongdoing. His lawyers say that it is the detective who has been falsely accused.

“Despite New York Times stories to the contrary, no defendant investigated, interviewed or questioned by Mr. Scarcella, including David Ranta, has been exonerated or proven to be innocent,” his lawyers, Alan M. Abramson and Joel S. Cohen, said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, declined to say whether the office had taken a position on Mr. Hill’s parole.

Mr. Hill should be released because of his improving prison record and his deteriorating health, Ms. Katz said. Mr. Hill has multiple sclerosis.

Robert Dennison, a former Parole Board chairman who now works as an inmate advocate, said the previous admissions of guilt could be a tough hurdle for Mr. Hill. However, he noted that Sundhe Moses, another inmate convicted in a case investigated by Mr. Scarcella, was released after pleading innocence and documenting discrepancies in his case.

“The Parole Board is supposed to measure remorse, which is something that is very difficult to do when someone comes in and says, ‘Look, I’m not guilty, even though society found me guilty,’ ” said Mr. Dennison, who wrote a letter to the Parole Board on Mr. Hill’s behalf. “It puts him in a difficult, but not insurmountable, position.”

Correction: April 17, 2014

An article in some editions on Monday about the coming parole hearing for Robert Hill, whose conviction in the killing of Donald Manboardes is one of the cases reopened after allegations of misconduct against the detective Louis Scarcella, misstated the month and the year that Mr. Manboardes was fatally shot. It was January 1987, not December 1986.

 

Cleaning up Joe Hynes’ mess

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, February 25, 2014, 9:16 PM

By Harry Siegel

Forget about it, John. This is Brooklyn.

If any one case captures the stinking, spreading mess six-term Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes left in the office of the man who defeated him, Ken Thompson , it’s the “grid kid” slaying.
That was the tabloid wood in 2003, when Fairfield University student Mark Fisher made his first foray into the city. The 19-year-old football star met three male classmates for drinks in Manhattan. There he met another student he was flirting with, and, drunk, followed her to a late-night house party in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.
Hours later, Fisher’s body was wrapped in a blanket on a quiet side street, his face bruised from a beating presumably delivered before he was shot five times.
The partying teens quickly lawyered up, leaving investigators frustrated and unable to press charges even as one suspect, known knucklehead Antonio Russo, cut off his signature braids and left for California hours later. Facing mounting criticism for failing to make a case and with an eye on a tough reelection bid, Hynes sent in his “elite team,” led by rackets chief Michael Vecchione and star trial attorney Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi .
Suddenly — a Vecchione trademark — witnesses began stepping up to testify against both Russo and his friend, John Giuca, who hosted the house party.
In a trial with two separate juries, Nicolazzi, who came in with a perfect trial record, took the much tougher, entirely circumstantial case against Giuca, whom no witnesses or physical evidence placed at the apparent scene of the crime.
Using a series of overlapping, sometimes conflicting accounts — from Giuca’s girlfriend, his longtime friend and Ditmas Park neighbor Al Cleary (who’d himself been seen as a person of interest at least through the grand jury, where he waived his immunity to testify) and finally a junkie named John Avitto, who claimed to have heard a confession — she laid out a theory in which Giuca either felt disrespected or, to toughen up his purported crew, had instructed Russo “to go show that guy what’s up.”

Calling Giuca “Tony Soprano” and a “self-styled mafioso,” she told the jury it didn’t matter if he was there when Fisher was killed, since “you know this defendant is every bit involved in this crime.”
The jury convicted both men of murder. Giuca got 25 to life, and will first go up for parole in 2029.
But the trial left more loose ends than clear answers. One juror was recorded afterward admitting he knew Giuca, lied about it in jury selection and pressed others to find him guilty. A witness repeatedly described as uncooperative with the initial investigation was later hired straight out of law school as a Brooklyn ADA. Vecchione’s reputation is in tatters.
And three witnesses, including Avitto, have recanted their trial testimony, risking perjury charges to do so (the other two now swear they were pressed into delivering false accounts by the DA), according to a letter from Giuca’s current lawyer, Mark Bederow, asking Thompson to revisit the case.
In a second letter from Bederow the DA received Monday, ex-ADA and law professor Bennett Gershman, who wrote the book “Prosecutorial Misconduct,” took aim at Nicolazzi, claiming that “in order to win a murder conviction in a high-profile case [she] recklessly disregarded a prosecutor’s overriding responsibility . . . that only reliable and trustworthy evidence be presented,” and instead used “misleading, deceptive and inflammatory tactics.”
Returning to Avitto, Nicolazzi’s surprise final witness, who, the defense was given no opportunity to prepare for: Not only was his testimony “almost certainly false,” Gershman writes, but “from the record it appears that ADA Nicolazzi knew it was false.” This is the witness whom she personally vouched for with the jury at least three times: “you know you could trust him.”
Avitto testified that while at Rikers, he overheard Giuca confess in a conversation with his father. But Giuca’s father couldn’t speak after strokes years earlier.
Worse, Avitto testified he’d volunteered to expose Giuca and received no consideration from the DA. In fact, he’d had seven serious violations of his rehab program (he admitted to only one in his testimony), any one of which should have triggered a substantial prison sentence. In one instance, writes Gershman, Nicolazzi privately vouched for Avitto with a judge to keep him from jail.
So Avitto lied in his Giuca testimony, and Nicolazzi apparently knew, both when he claimed just one violation, and again when he said he had no arrangement with the DA.
“The case you’re calling about is a complicated one,” said Thompson spokeswoman Sheila Stainback. “But it was carefully reviewed, tried and upheld by the appellate division. We have Mr. Bederow’s letters and they are being reviewed. Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi is a respected and outstanding prosecutor who has an exemplary trial record.”
It is complicated, and guilt and innocence may be lost behind the haze of the trial. But even giving Nicolazzi — who has had a sterling reputation in a sometimes troubled office, and is now leading the probe of 50 convictions tied to former Detective Louis Scarcella, like Vecchione a provider of suspiciously miraculous witnesses that led to bad convictions — every benefit of the doubt, Gershman’s claims warrant a substantial response.
Thompson has his work cut out cleaning up after Hynes. He could start with Giuca.


http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/cleaning-joe-hynes-mess-article-1.1701831

Mother of John Giuca hopes District Attorney Ken Thompson will review murder conviction

From the Brooklyn Daily:

http://www.brooklyndaily.com/stories/2014/8/all-noth-hynes-movie-2014-02-21-bk_2014_8.html

By Will Bredderman

A Brooklyn mother is hoping the new district attorney will give a second chance to her son, who was convicted of murder in 2005 — and whose story will soon be a film starring actor Chris Noth.
Former top borough prosecutor Charles Hynes — whom Noth will play in upcoming independent film, according to the Daily News — and his star assistant district attorney Michael Vecchione found Flatbush youth John Giuca guilty of the 2003 murder of Fairfield University football star Mark Fisher. But Giuca’s mom is hoping that Ken Thompson — who defeated Hynes last year — will give the case a second look.

“We new he had no shot with Charles Hynes in office,” said Doreen Giuliano. “I’m hoping that Ken Thompson reviews the case, and is thorough in his investigation, and that ultimately John is exonerated.”
In the early hours of Oct. 12, 2003 police found Fisher’s body shot five times, wrapped in a blanket, and dumped in front of an Argyle Road residence after a night of partying with friends in Manhattan. That party had wound up at Giuca’s nearby home, and the blanket covering Fisher’s corpse belonged to Giuliano.
The prosecution successfully argued that Giuca — then 20 years old — had instructed his friend Antonio Russo to kill Fisher and had provided the never-recovered murder weapon to do the deed, as retribution against Fisher for sitting on his table earlier that night, and as a way to boost the reputation of their alleged gang “The Ghetto Mafia.”
But Giuliano believes her son never got a fair trial — due to both a biased jury and a biased prosecution. According to Giuliano, an overheard comment led her to doubt the credibility of one of the jurors. And, in a move straight from a Hollywood screenplay, Giuliano decided to disguise herself and use a false name to court the juror and catch him admitting to misconduct.

Giuliano recorded the juror, Bensonhurst resident Jason Allo, admitting he had lied during jury selection when he had claimed he did not know Giuca and Russo. The tapes became public through an article in the magazine Vanity Fair, but an Appeals Court judge refused to consider the recordings as evidence because Allo had not made a sworn statement that he had lied.
Giuliano and Giuca’s attorney, Mark Bederow, also submitted a brief to Thompson alleging that one of the prosecution’s key witnesses had perjured himself, and that Hynes’s team withheld evidence that would compromise the witness’s account.
The lawyer’s brief points out that during the investigation into the murder, the witness’s attorney submitted a polygraph test in which the witness stated he had no knowledge of how Fisher died — and the lie detector had determined he was telling the truth. But the witness later testified that Giuca had told him that he had ordered Fisher’s killing and supplied the gun. The brief alleges the prosecution failed to share the results of the polygraph test with the jury.
“He either (1) procured a false polygraph examination report, (2) truthfully passed the polygraph examination and thus repeatedly perjured himself over the course of three sworn statements, or (3) was such a talented liar that he ‘fooled’ the polygraph expert and convinced him that he was truthful despite the fact that he was lying,” Bederow wrote to Thompson.

Giuliano believes her case is strong enough to free her son.
“He was only a convicted murderer because he had a flawed trial,” Giuliano argued.
Thompson’s office declined to comment.

Petition Seeking to Void Brooklyn Murder Conviction Calls Verdict a ‘Sham’ - NYT

By VIVIAN YEEFEB. 2, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/nyregion/lawyer-petitions-brooklyn-prosecutor-to-overturn-conviction-in-03-murder.html?_r=0 

The 2005 conviction of John Giuca for the murder of Mark Fisher, a college football player from New Jersey, was a “sham” built on prosecutorial misconduct, a feeble defense, contradictory evidence, a biased juror and the testimony of witnesses who have since recanted, Mr. Giuca’s lawyer wrote in a scathing petition to be sent to the Brooklyn district attorney on Monday.

Mr. Giuca has long maintained that he was innocent in the death of Mr. Fisher, a 19-year-old college sophomore who was shot to death in Brooklyn in 2003. Mr. Fisher’s body was found wrapped in a yellow blanket near Mr. Giuca’s house after a night of drinking and partying with him and other young people. His lawyer asserts that prosecutors mishandled the case and that the trial verdict should be voided after revelations that three key prosecution witnesses have recanted, saying they testified under pressure or to avoid prosecution.

“Justice is not served by the continued incarceration of a man who did not receive a fair trial and who was convicted on false, flimsy, incompatible, and now thoroughly discredited, evidence,” Mr. Giuca’s lawyer, Mark Bederow, wrote in the petition to overturn the conviction.

The petition’s timing favors Mr. Giuca: The new Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, vowed before he took office in January to aggressively review dozens of possible wrongful murder convictions won by his predecessor, Charles J. Hynes — who prosecuted Mr. Giuca.

Mr. Giuca’s “continued incarceration will only add to the public’s growing lack of confidence in the Brooklyn criminal justice system, which in recent years has suffered black eye after black eye,” Mr. Bederow wrote.

At the trial, the lead prosecutor, Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, offered several different theories for why and how Mr. Giuca, along with his co-defendant, Antonio Russo, shot Mr. Fisher.

In one, Mr. Russo, a Brooklyn friend of Mr. Giuca, decided to rob Mr. Fisher and asked Mr. Giuca to give him a gun, which he used to kill Mr. Fisher and then returned to Mr. Giuca. At the trial, Lauren Calciano, Mr. Giuca’s former girlfriend, testified that Mr. Giuca later admitted he had given a gun to Mr. Russo. But Mr. Bederow wrote that Ms. Calciano recently contacted him, admitting she had lied because prosecutors had intimidated her.

In an affidavit, she said prosecutors had implied she was involved in the crime, threatened to charge her with perjury or obstruction, told her investigators had recovered compromising photos of her and threatened to bring up a delicate personal matter if she did not testify. She said detectives mentioned they knew her father was in prison, telling her that not cooperating was “going to make it hard on him and my family.” She had hoped to work for the United States Marshals and attend law school, and investigators told her to “think about my future,” she said.

Ms. Nicolazzi said Ms. Calciano’s testimony was enough to convict Mr. Giuca. But toward the end of the trial, she introduced yet another theory: A jailhouse informant, John Avitto, testified he had overheard Mr. Giuca admit to having the gun when his father asked him about it during a visit. He said Mr. Giuca had confessed to pistol-whipping and punching Mr. Fisher after Mr. Fisher withdrew only $20 from an A.T.M. near Mr. Giuca’s home; then “another guy” took the gun and shot Mr. Fisher.

Mr. Avitto, too, has recanted, saying he approached prosecutors in hopes of cutting a deal and fabricated his testimony based on newspaper stories. Though facing more prison time after leaving a court-ordered drug treatment program, he said Ms. Nicolazzi personally came to his court hearing, after which he was released again.

“My hope was that the D.A. believed I was useful to them and that in return the D.A. would help me with my case,” Mr. Avitto said in his affidavit.

Compounding Mr. Avitto’s false testimony, Mr. Bederow wrote, was prosecutors’ failure to disclose most of it to Mr. Giuca’s defense lawyer, leaving him little time to prepare — one of several prosecutorial violations Mr. Bederow cites that could undermine the conviction. Yet even when inconsistencies were apparent in other witness statements, Mr. Giuca’s lawyer, Samuel Gregory, did not point them out; he also failed to investigate other leads, Mr. Bederow wrote.

A third witness, Anthony Beharry, testified that he had disposed of a gun from Mr. Giuca’s house after the murder, but has recanted. He said he testified only after prosecutors promised him immunity, threatened to charge him with perjury and implied he would not be able to see his daughter, who was the subject of a custody battle, unless he cooperated.

As for a fourth key witness, Albert Cleary, Mr. Bederow noted what he said were multiple instances in which Mr. Cleary contradicted his own earlier statements, records or others’ testimony.

Mr. Bederow also revived an argument that made headlines in 2008, when Mr. Giuca’s mother revealed she had disguised herself and used a fake identity to seduce one of Mr. Giuca’s jurors. She recorded him admitting he should not have been picked for the jury because he had read news coverage of the case and knew some of the witnesses.