In one day, two men are acquitted of decades-old murders in Manhattan

The killings occurred eight blocks apart within nine months, near the height of New York City’s crack wars, in a Harlem district that was becoming synonymous with police corruption.

As of Monday, the two otherwise unrelated murder cases have something else in common: The convicted men were acquitted in a Manhattan courthouse. They are the latest in a long line of New Yorkers, predominantly black and Hispanic, to have their names cleared after decades in prison.

One of the men, Jabar Walker, 49, was convicted in 1995 of shooting two men in a parked car and remained jailed even though a man who testified he heard Mr. Walker confess in an affidavit revoked.

The other, Wayne Gardine, also 49, was convicted in a case in which the only evidence against him was the word of a drug dealer who changed his story several times, describing the killer as 6 feet tall while Mr. Gardine was only 6 feet 1 inch. was long. -8, and was known for providing information to police in attempts to minimize his own criminal cases.

Mr. Gardine’s case was overseen by a detective who later pleaded guilty to drug trafficking conspiracy. Mr Gardine was released on parole last year but was immediately placed in an immigration detention center and faces deportation to his native Jamaica.

Mr Gardine’s case was taken up by the Legal Aid Society’s Wrongful Conviction Unit, and Mr Walker’s by the Innocence Project. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has a unit that investigates possible wrongful convictions, cooperated in both investigations.

At least 115 murder convictions have been overturned in New York since 1989, a substantial portion of the nearly 1,300 overturned nationwide, according to the New York City newspaper. National register of exonerations.

Jabar Walker

In Mr. Walker’s case, prosecutors appeared to have solid evidence. A woman who lived across West 148th Street, where two men were shot in a car on May 28, 1995, testified that she saw Mr. Walker, then 20, shooting. A man who knew Mr. Walker told jurors he heard him confess. He was convicted of two first-degree murders and sentenced to consecutive terms of 25 years to life.

But with the help of Mr. Walker, who fought for years to clear his name, the Innocence Project ran into major problems.

The woman who said she witnessed the shooting, Vanessa Vigo, had received monetary benefits from the district attorney’s office, which paid her to move into a new apartment, according to the Innocence Project. Prosecutors did not disclose this to Mr. Walker’s attorney as required, the Innocence Project said. Prosecutors even told jurors that Ms. Vigo “was not compensated in connection with her testimony.”

The Innocence Project said that Ms. Vigo, the prosecution’s only eyewitness, gave statements that were riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and that changed during the case — and that she also misidentified a suspect in another shooting nearby. The District Attorney’s Post Conviction Justice Unit wrote: “The public has lost confidence in Ms. Vigo’s testimony.”

The man who said he heard Mr. Walker’s confession, John Mobley, recanted in 1998 on the day of Mr. Walker’s conviction and provided affidavits in 1999 and 2021 attesting to it.

At the time of Mr. Walker’s trial, Mr. Mobley faced a misdemeanor charge, which was reduced to a misdemeanor in exchange for his testimony, the Innocence Project said. According to the Post Conviction Justice Unit, Mr. Mobley said officers from the 30th Precinct suggested he would be charged with other murders if he did not charge Mr. Walker. The unit wrote that it “found Mr. Mobley credible.”

The Innocence Project said Mr. Walker’s attorney had conducted his first criminal case, and the Post Conviction Justice Unit wrote that he had “failed to investigate weaknesses” in the testimony of Mr. Mobley and another witness.

On Monday morning, Mr. Walker, wearing a graying goatee and white shirt, entered the packed courtroom of Judge Miriam R. Best of State Supreme Court with his hands cuffed behind him.

“It’s been a long road, and you made it,” Vanessa Potkin, his lawyer from the Innocence Project, told the court as he turned to him.

Mr. Walker quietly said, “I made it,” and lifted his collar to wipe away a tear.

“The sentence is hereby…” Judge Best said, but he had to stop as his family and friends burst into applause. She silenced the spectators with a stern look. “The conviction is hereby quashed.”

As Mr. Walker, no longer handcuffed, walked out of the courtroom, the head of the Post Conviction Justice Unit, Shalena Howard, clasped her hands and bowed to him.

Wayne Gardine

Just after midnight on September 3, 1994, Robert Mickens, a 22-year-old boy known as “Dak,” was shot nearly a dozen times outside a brick townhouse on Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem. According to the Legal Aid Society file, the street was an open-air drug market, which gave the following account.

Police interviewed two teenagers the night of the shooting: a 19-year-old, identified in court papers only as NS, and his 14-year-old friend, identified as NV. Neither claimed to know the attacker, but both said they had. I saw the shooting up close.

A month later, after NS was arrested for drug possession, detectives visited him in jail and showed him a photo of Mr. Gardine. NS identified Mr. Gardine by a nickname and said he had heard that a man with that nickname had been the shooter.

The murder was investigated by an inexperienced detective, who said the case was led by his supervisor, Detective Willie Parson, who discouraged him from following other leads.

Around this time, the 30th Precinct, where the detectives were based, was the site of a scandal that ultimately led to the conviction of 30 officers. Officers of the Dirty 30, as the police department became known, stole drugs and guns from dealers, extorted them, beat them up and lied in court, prosecutors said. Detective Parson was not charged at the time, but he was arrested in 2000 and later was guilty of transporting cash for a cocaine and heroin ring.

Later, during the Legal Aid Society investigation, the younger witness, NV, said he and NS had agreed to accuse Mr Gardine of appeasing their own drug boss, who was friends with the victim, and to prevent him had to take revenge for the murder. himself. He said they were at least 200 feet away when the shooting occurred and could not distinguish the shooter.

Legal Aid also found that police failed to take action based on information about an alternate suspect who had a motive to shoot Mr. Mickens, the filing said.

Mr Gardine said in a statement released by his lawyers that he was hopeful. “I’m glad the justice system finally worked,” he said of the conviction being overturned.

But he faces deportation because of the murder conviction and because he is accused of entering the United States illegally, which his lawyer says he disputes.

“We really hope that this official order from the judge will be the last push we need to release him,” attorney Lou Fox of the Legal Aid Society said after the court hearing Monday.

Liset Cruz And Hurubie Meko reporting contributed.