NEW YORK (AP) — After decades in prison, three men were released Friday in one of the most horrific crimes of violent New York 1990s — the killing of an employee who was set on fire at a subway tollbooth.
NEW YORK (AP) — After decades in prison, three men were released Friday in one of the most horrific crimes of violent New York 1990s — the killing of an employee who was set on fire at a subway tollbooth.
A judge dismissed the murder convictions of Vincent Ellerbe, James Irons and Thomas Malik after Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez cited “serious problems with the evidence on which these convictions are based.” He pointed to doubts about the men’s confessions and problems with witness identifications.
The three confessed to the 1995 murder of token seller Harry Kaufman and were found guilty. The case resonated from New York to Washington to Hollywood after parallels were drawn between the deadly arson and a scene in the movie Money Train.
“The results of an extensive year-long retrial of this case leave us unable to stand by the convictions,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a press release. He cited “serious problems with the evidence on which these convictions are based” and acknowledged “the damage done to these men by this failure of our system”.
The confessions were at odds with evidence at the scene and with each other, and identifying witnesses was problematic, prosecutors say. Some of the men have long said they were coerced into a false confession in the case, in which a lead investigator was later repeatedly accused of coercing confessions and framing suspects.
Ellerbe, 44, was paroled in 2020 but Malik and Irons, both 45, have remained in prison.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
NEW YORK (AP) – Prosecutors are declining to convict three men who spent decades in prison for one of the most horrifying crimes of violent New York 1990s – the killing of an employee who was set on fire at a subway tollbooth .
Vincent Ellerbe, James Irons and Thomas Malik confessed to the 1995 murder of token seller Harry Kaufman and were found guilty. The case resonated from New York to Washington to Hollywood after parallels were drawn between the deadly arson and a scene in the movie Money Train.”
But Brooklyn prosecutors now plan to join defense attorneys in asking a judge Friday to overturn the convictions of all three men.
“The results of an extensive year-long retrial of this case leave us unable to stand by the convictions,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a press release. He cited “serious problems with the evidence on which these convictions are based” and acknowledged “the damage done to these men by this failure of our system”.
The confessions were at odds with evidence at the scene and with each other, and identifying witnesses was problematic, prosecutors say. Some of the men have long said they were coerced into a false confession in the case, in which a lead investigator was later repeatedly accused of coercing confessions and framing suspects.
Ellerbe, 44, was paroled in 2020 but Malik and Irons, both 45, have remained in prison.
Malik was still dealing with the long-awaited news Friday morning, attorney Ronald Kuby said.
“Yesterday was the first day he actually allowed himself to believe he was going to be free,” said Kuby, who also represents Ellerbe and said he was “extremely happy” that his conviction was overturned.
A message was left with Irons’ attorney for comment.
Kaufman was working a night shift at a Brooklyn subway station on November 26, 1995, when attackers first tried to rob him, then squirted gasoline into the cabin and lit it with matches while he pleaded, “Don’t light it!” That’s what they said authorities at that time. The cab exploded and Kaufman, 50, ran away in flames. The married father died of his injuries two weeks later.
The attack was similar to a scene in Money Train, an action film that had been released four days earlier. Then-Senate Majority Leader and Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole went into the Senate to call for a boycott of the film.
Authorities have given mixed signals over the years as to whether they believed the film inspired the murder.
The police searched for suspects and eventually came to question Irons and obtained a confession that he was acting as a lookout. He implicated Malik and Ellerbe as the men who set the tollbooth on fire.
From their arrest, Ellerbe and Malik claimed they were coerced into making false confessions, with Malik saying Detective Louis Scarcella yelled at him and banged his head against a locker. Scarcella testified that he cursed, banged on a table and tried to startle Malik, who was 18 at the time, but did not hit him.
Gonzalez’s office said its review found that Scarcella and his partner Irons provided key details about the crime scene — details prosecutors used later in the trial to argue his confession was specific enough that it had to be true . But it clearly contained dubious claims. For example, he said he was able to see his alleged accomplices jump into a getaway car even though it was parked a block away and around a corner, prosecutors said.
At the time, Scarcella was a star of Brooklyn Homicide in a crime-ridden city. Citywide, murders topped more than 2,200 at their peak in 1990; compared to 488 last year and a low of 295 in 2018.
In 2013, however, after questions mounted about Scarcella’s tactics, the Brooklyn Attorney’s Office began reviewing numerous cases he had worked on.
Scarcella, who retired in 2000, has denied any wrongdoing. While more than a dozen convictions in his cases were overturned, prosecutors stood by numerous others.
Brooklyn prosecutors’ review of old convictions is widely regarded as one of the most ambitious of its kind. In New York and across the country, such efforts have become more frequent over the past 15 years as DNA evidence, a growing body of research into false confessions, and other factors have meant that some prosecutors have felt compelled to be more open to investigating claims of false convictions.
“This is no longer about a bad apple or two. This is a systemic rot,” Kuby said.
Jennifer Peltz, The Associated Press