'Height of injustice': New York judge vacates two wrongful murder convictions

A New York judge vacated two wrongful convictions Monday after reinvestigations found the murder trials were based on incorrect testimony, the district attorney in Manhattan announced.

Wayne Gardine and Jabar Walker, both 49, were convicted of separate murders in the 1990s and spent more than 20 years in prison, according to the Manhattan district attorney's office. Judge Miriam Best on Monday approved the motion to vacate the convictions after the D.A.’s Post-Conviction Justice Unit and defense lawyers found key testimony in both trials was unreliable.

Walker was released from prison Monday after 25 years following a 1998 double murder conviction.

Gardine was released on parole last year for a 1996 murder but was then detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Gardine's family has called for his release and drop of deportation proceedings.

“Every time I think of Wayne, I’m brought to tears. He lost nearly three decades of his life for a crime that he didn’t commit. ICE can end this nightmare now by immediately freeing my son,” said Grace Davis, Gardine’s mother.

Prosecutors across the country are reexamining convictions handed down decades prior based on faulty testimony, police misconduct and inadequate counsel.

“Wayne Gardine was just 22 years old when he was sentenced to decades in prison following a trial that we now believe relied on an unreliable witness and testimony – losing years of freedom due to an unjust conviction,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. said. “Unjust convictions are the height of injustice and while we can never completely undo the pain he has experienced, I hope this is the first step in allowing Mr. Gardine to rebuild his life and reunite with his loved ones.”

Witness pinned murder on Gardine to please drug boss

The Legal Aid Society and the district attorney's Post-Conviction Justice Unit found the sole eyewitness who testified against Gardine was too far away from the scene to see the crime or identify him, according to a court filing.

Another witness who did not testify at the trial said they were too far away to identify the shooter, and the witnesses deliberately pinned the shooting on Gardine to please their drug boss, who was friends with the victim, the Legal Aid Society said.

The lead detective also said he “no longer stands by his work in this case,” court documents by assistant district attorney Jenna Dunton said.

His family and attorney are now calling on ICE to release him.

“We are elated that Mr. Gardine will finally have his name cleared of this conviction that has haunted him for nearly three decades, yet he is still not a free man and faces additional and unwarranted punishment if deported,” said Lou Fox, Gardine’s attorney with the Wrongful Conviction Unit at the Legal Aid Society. “We thank New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg for joining us on this motion, and we call on ICE to immediately release our client so he can return to his family and community, and to drop deportation proceedings.”

Jabar Walker freed from prison Monday

Walker was 23 years old when he was convicted on two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive terms of 25 years to life.

He filed a motion in December 2019 claiming actual innocence, due process violations, Brady violations and ineffective assistance of counsel, according to a court filing. The Innocence Project and the district attorney’s Post-Conviction Justice Unit launched a joint probe in September 2022.

“The joint reinvestigation, guided by a commitment to transparency and the ascertainment of truth, revealed a myriad of ways where the system failed Mr. Walker, and uncovered pervasive misconduct that led to his wrongful conviction and new evidence of what he has stated all along – he is innocent. He has now spent more than half of his life in prison for a crime he did not do,” said Vanessa Potkin, Innocence Project’s director of special litigation.

The probe found that law enforcement pressured a witness, John Mobley, into testifying against Walker by showing him photos of other crime scenes and implying they would charge him in those homicides, according to court documents. Mobley said he was incarcerated in New Jersey and faced a lengthy prison sentence on a felony charge at the time. As a result of his testimony, he was given a reduced sentence and misdemeanor conviction.

Mobley sought to recant his testimony on the day of Walker's sentencing, but Walker’s lawyers did not meet with him, court documents said. He has recanted his testimony in affidavits since.

“Not only was the case against Jabar Walker built upon unreliable and recanted testimony, he did not have the benefit of an effective defense attorney – one of the constitutional bedrocks of our justice system,” Bragg said. “Despite these serious issues, Mr. Walker received a sentence that could have kept him in prison for his entire life.”

Widespread official misconduct, group finds

The National Registry of Exonerations – a project of the Newkirk Center for Science and Society at the University of California, Irvine, the University of Michigan Law School, and Michigan State University College of Law – has tracked 3,422 exonerations since 1989. One man, Glynn Simmons, spent more than 48 years in prison until he was exonerated from a murder conviction this year, according to the registry.

In its 2022 report, the group found official misconduct occurred in at least 195 of the 233 exonerations tracked over the year.

The first conviction review units emerged in the late 2000s and there are now more than 115 in the country's more than 2,500 prosecutor's offices, according to Marissa Bluestine, assistant director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

"A CIU both looks back to identify cases in the past that need to be revisited," Bluestine said. "But it's also learning from that error to prevent those errors from happening in the future."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New York judge vacates two wrongful convictions decades after trial