Out of prison after 40 years, Amer Zada seeks to overturn conviction in 1979 Nyack murder

A man who spent four decades in prison for the sexual assault stabbing death of a 17-year-old girl in Nyack is hopeful that new evidence suggesting police and prosecutorial misconduct helps clear his name.

Amer Zada, who was seen near the body of Shirley Smith early on June 15, 1979, has long contended he was framed by police planting a knife, the purported murder weapon. His lawyers now point to reports and other evidence that were withheld from him when he went to trial and was convicted of second-degree murder that would have bolstered his claims of innocence.

"I didn't doubt that they were prejudiced against me but at the time I would have never thought it would have went that far as to actually plant a weapon," Zada, 62, told The Journal News/lohud this summer. "I didn't think they would be that underhanded."

But with all the details he's learned in recent years, he is now certain there was nothing they wouldn't have tried to secure a conviction.

How new evidence came to light

The new evidence was discovered in recent years through Freedom of Information requests by a documentary filmmaker, Paula Parrish, and one of Zada’s lawyers, Arthur Larkin, who is working with exoneree-turned-lawyer Jeffrey Deskovic to get Zada’s conviction overturned. Among the information not previously disclosed to the defense was:

• Reports related to the two officers who found the knife;

• Evidence that authorities knew testimony about Zada acquiring the knife was false;

• A key witness’ pending criminal charges that gave him a possible motive to lie;

• Statements by two witnesses who were near the scene of the crime

The defense team also contends that new photos of the evidence reveal that a serologist who testified about blood found on one of Zada’s boots was referring to the wrong one – and that if he had gotten the correct boot it would have backed up Zada’s claim that he had already taken off one of the boots when he went to check on the mortally injured Smith.

Zada's motion to overturn the conviction seeks a dismissal of the indictment, or at least a new trial. It was initiated in 2020 but held in abeyance while further DNA tests on the victim's clothing were performed. Those results proved inconclusive.

The defense filed an expanded motion in recent weeks that included a criminologist’s opinions that Zada had been framed, blood evidence on his shirt was not consistent with someone who committed a violent stabbing and that Zada had been deprived of effective representation because his lawyer had not called an expert witness to address forensic details of the case.

What the Rockland DA's office says

Scott Waters, a spokesman for Rockland District Attorney Thomas Walsh, declined to discuss the defense's specific claims. He cited Zada's numerous failed appeals and motions to overturn the verdict years ago and said the office "would examine the validity of the defendant's latest claims".

Prosecutors have until mid December to file their answer.

Waters offered that the office "is committed to ensuring the integrity of all convictions". And when Walsh, then a state judge, ran for DA in 2019 he promised a "wrongful conviction policy" that insisted that "Judge Walsh doesn’t want there to be a shred of doubt that the right individual has been held accountable for criminal behavior."

Larkin and Deskovic say that if Walsh was sincere about his campaign plank he will agree Zada's conviction shouldn't stand.

"There's a vast amount of information that was not given to the defense in this case that's clearly relevant," said Larkin, who contends that any "fair minded District Attorney" would be concerned by what has surfaced. "And we have strong evidence that there was either misleading or outright false testimony given by witnesses."

What happened that day in 1979

Shortly before dawn on June 15, 1979, police officers arrived in the Windjammer restaurant parking lot on the Nyack waterfront to find Zada near Smith’s body, which was lying face down behind a Dumpster. She was mostly naked and had been stabbed 26 times. The officers who took him into custody claimed Zada’s pants were down and that he had been on top of the woman. But he maintains he was fully clothed and had only been trying to help her after hearing a loud gurgling sound coming from that area.

Two days later, police found the suspected murder weapon under questionable circumstances. The knife was in the same patrol car the officers had put Zada in the morning of the murder - even though they had searched him and the car for a weapon.

A different officer driving the car and a colleague – both of whom have since died - claimed that while getting gas at the police garage they looked through the back window and saw the knife lying on the floor. The driver of that patrol car suggested it likely dislodged from where it had been when he had to stop suddenly while backing out of his driveway that morning.

Noted civil rights attorney William Kunstler represented Zada and assailed the case against his client as a frame job.

Zada’s family lived in South Nyack and was well known to police at the time of Smith’s murder. His older brother Samir was convicted of murder in the killings of a dance instructor and a plumber in robberies two weeks apart in the summer of 1973. Their father had felony arrests, including for shooting at a police officer. Another brother served prison time for a federal drug conviction. He later died of a drug overdose while on parole.

In his 1989 book “Murder Along the Way” then-Rockland DA Kenneth Gribetz devoted an entire chapter - entitled 'The Family That Preys Together' - to the Zadas. In his recounting of the Smith murder, Gribetz downplayed the importance of the knife, misstated how it was found and bristled at Kunstler’s insinuations that Zada was targeted because of the crimes of his family and that they were Muslim.

Gribetz could not be reached for comment.

What happened at the trial

A key part of the trial defense was that Zada never had the knife and certainly couldn't have removed it from his pocket and hidden it in the car while his hands were cuffed behind him. No fingerprints were found on the knife.

What Kunstler did not know at trial was that there were activity logs and fueling records only released recently that showed inconsistencies in the two officers’ accounts of how they spotted the knife and raised questions as to whether the second one had even been at the garage that day at all.

Once they had a knife, investigators tried to show how Zada got it. A local store owner, Joseph Lenti - who the defense contends needed to please law enforcement as he was about to be charged with a federal drug crime - claimed Zada had bought it from him earlier that day and that it was the last of several knives he had gotten from the Bronx Terminal Market. A credit slip indicating Zada owed him $15 for something purchased that day did not include what he bought. Lenti also produced a receipt from the Bronx Terminal Market but it did not identify the items he acquired.

Nyack Detective Arthur Keenan and DA Investigator James Stewart did check Lenti’s account about where he got them. But when they went to the Bronx Terminal Market, an off-duty New Rochelle detective working security told them knives were not among the things sold there.

That detail made it into Stewart's report – but the report was not turned over to the defense. Nor was the business card of the New Rochelle cop, which was still in the Nyack police files all these years later.

It is inconceivable, Larkin contends, that Kunstler would not have sought out that security officer if he knew about him. And he said jurors likely would have rejected the knife and its tie to Zada if they knew Lenti had lied about it.

Keenan twice during the trial testified he did no follow-up to confirm how Lenti got the knife.

"When witnesses are on the stand telling you they didn't do a certain investigative step in order to hide what they learned when they DID take that investigative step, I'd be concerned if I was the DA," Larkin said.

Keenan did face scrutiny at the trial when Kunstler all but accused him of planting Smith's blood on the knife when he transported it to the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner for testing. He responded "my conscience" when Kunstler asked what would have stopped him from doing so.

In a phone interview this week, Keenan recalled Kunstler telling him later outside the courthouse that it was "a good answer."

Keenan said he didn't recall the particulars of his and Stewart's visit to the Bronx Terminal Market or why he testified that he hadn't followed up on where the knife came from.

But he downplayed the significance of the report, saying all it proved was that Lenti hadn't remembered accurately where he got the knife.

"I think they're grasping for straws at this point trying to clear (Zada's) name," Keenan said.

Another witness

The only non-police witness who implicated Zada was another 17-year-old, Donald Lewis, who testified that he saw Zada that morning standing at a phone booth asking Smith if she wanted to smoke a joint and her answering "Sure, why not."

Kunstler got the judge to direct the prosecutor, Chief Assistant District Attorney William Frank, to reveal any criminal charges that Lewis might have faced. Frank cited a minor noise violation and then in closing arguments told jurors that Lewis had no motive to lie when he described seeing Zada and Smith together.

After the trial Lewis recanted his testimony but then recanted his recantation. When Kunstler tried to get the verdict overturned, the judge refused, also doubting that Lewis had any motive to lie.

But what neither Kunstler nor the judge knew was that Lewis was facing criminal charges related to a bicycle accident involving a South Nyack police car and was suing that village over the accident. Lewis eventually reached a monetary settlement with the village.

Zada's defense contends those details gave Lewis a powerful incentive to lie because the criminal charges against him likely affected the prospects of his civil lawsuit.

Frank said in an interview this week that he did not recall the details of Lewis' involvement or Stewart's report about Lenti and the knives.

He said he had not seen the defense motion or discussed it with current prosecutors. But he took umbrage at being accused of withholding evidence, saying he had worked under legendary Manhattan DA Frank Hogan and learned there how to be the right kind of prosecutor.

"I was fastidious. I went ahead and learned to do the right thing, to completely honor my obligation," he said. "In other words, I wasn't cute. Are there some DAs out there who might be cute? Sure there are, but I wasn't one of them."

He said his mindset was that he had such a strong case, why would he have risked that by cutting corners? And if some evidence didn't make its way to the defense, he said that could be seen as "de minimis", too insignificant to have convinced a jury.

Zada did not testify at his trial but jurors did hear the testimony he gave to the grand jury that indicted him.

Defense witnesses and phone records backed up Zada’s insistence that he was at the scene because his car had broken down nearby and he called a friend to arrange for a tow truck. He claimed that he was waiting for the tow when he observed Smith behind the Dumpster and went to help her.

His lawyers contend that witness accounts from a couple sitting in a car nearby were withheld from the defense and could have been used to confirm the friend's testimony and bolster the attack on the prosecution’s timeline.

The jury was clearly convinced by the police accounts. In addition to the murder charge, Zada was convicted of aggravated sexual abuse and attempted sodomy and sentenced to the maximum, 25 years to life in prison.

After the sentencing

He was approved for parole in February 2018 on his eighth try. But because he was a registered sex offender it took two years for him to be released when he finally found appropriate housing in upstate Mooers Forks.

He did another 90-day stint in prison following a parole violation in 2021 but has been living in Mooers again since August 2021.

He has two sons and nine grandchildren. He always found it difficult to speak with his kids about his prison years and what he was accused of, but his sons have closely followed the case since the new evidence surfaced, Zada said.

He looks at himself as a victim of not just law enforcement tunnel-vision but also their vendetta against his family.

"They weren't looking for anybody else because they didn't want anybody else," he said in the interview this summer. "In their mind they just wanted to convict me...They were just focused on putting me in prison."

And that led to the re-victimization of Smith and her family as well because they were denied true justice, he said.

He called those who investigated and prosecuted him "corrupt suckers" who "deserve whatever they have coming to them."

"They should be ashamed of themselves the way they used that girl's death for their own needs," he said, adding that he prays for the truth to come out not just for himself but for Smith as well. "She deserves the truth. She does...She was a young girl who didn't deserve to die, especially in such a heinous way."

Exoneree-turned-lawyer Jeffrey Deskovic gets involved

Deskovic, who started a foundation to fight wrongful convictions, got involved in Zada's case long before the new evidence surfaced. He penned a letter to the parole board before Zada's successful last bid, pointing out weaknesses in the case and emphasizing that Zada should not continue to be incarcerated simply because he maintained his innocence.

That both the victim and the defendant were teenagers who knew each other from school in Nyack was one obvious parallel to Deskovic's own case.

He was convicted in the 1989 rape and murder of a Peekskill High School classmate after giving police a false confession. He spent nearly 16 years in state prison before new DNA tests identified the real killer.

He said both their cases had interviews withheld from the defense, forensic evidence that should have cleared the suspect and tunnel vision by police and prosecutors.

"Once the authorities had it in their mind that we committed the crime, they kept going regardless of evidence," Deskovic said

In Zada's case, the FOIL requests by Parrish and Larkin were made to the Nyack Police Department and Rockland District Attorney's Office.

Other than the Stewart report, most of the items not disclosed in 1980 were found only in the Nyack police files, meaning police had likely not turned them over to prosecutors. Parrish checked the material against Kunstler's files. She attested to the fact that they were not in the files and Larkin contends that it was clear from the trial minutes that Kunstler's strategy showed he never had them.

The defense’s latest assault on the conviction is based on a review by forensic criminologist Brent Turvey. He opined that: the crime scene had been staged as part of an effort to frame Zada; the knife that was found could not have been the murder weapon because it had a one-sided blade and Smith was killed with a dagger or other type of two-sided blade; and the pattern of the blood on Zada's shirt, which police claimed they found on the ground between Smith's legs, was inconsistent with the splatter that would have been present had he stabbed her.

Turvey suggested that Smith was likely transported in a car to at least two locations in the parking lot based on blood smears and drag marks in areas away from the Dumpster where she was ultimately found. Zada’s car had no blood evidence in it and Turvey wrote that would have been impossible if his car was used considering the extent of Smith’s wounds and how often she might have been moved in and out of the car once stabbed.

Told of that theory, Frank called it "friggin' nonsense".

He and Keenan both expressed confidence in the conviction based on the claims by the first officer on the scene that he saw a half naked Zada on top of the victim.

"The evidence of his guilt was overwhelming," Frank said.

Walsh could consent to have the conviction overturned. But barring that, a judge or an appellate panel would have to be convinced that had the withheld evidence been presented at trial it would have reasonably affected the jury's judgement.

Larkin, who specializes in wrongful conviction claims, previously worked for New York City defending the city, its cops and prosecutors in civil rights matters. He said there was significant evidence pointing to Zada's actual innocence. But with the DNA tests failing to provide certainty, he acknowledges the crux of the motion is about how Zada didn't get a fair shake the first time.

"Often times what you see in these cases is an unfair trial that results in the conviction of an innocent guy," he said. "This case involves serious misconduct. I think the trial was very unfair and I don't think we can have confidence in the verdict."

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Nyack NY Shirley Smith murder: Amer Zeda seeks overturned conviction