Carl Dukes & Lavell Jones - False Confession / Police Misconduct

Dukes, Carl AND Jones, Lavell; murder; NRE: false confession, perjury/false accusation, police officer misconduct, misconduct that is not withholding evidence, witness tampering or misconduct interrogating co-defendant, misconduct in interrogation of exoneree, perjury by official

Suggestibility issues

S42 "A judge vacated the murder convictions of two men who spent most of the past twenty years in prison for the slaying of a college student in Albany in February 1997." [Wrongly convicted based largely on Jones' false confession, after 36-hour interrogation. The actual killer was a man by the name of Jeffrey Conrad.]

[Jones] [725:691]; 3rd Dept. 5/3/01; affirmed

"[I]t cannot be said that the verdict of guilt was clearly against the weight of the evidence."

[Dukes] 289 F.Supp.3d 387; N.D.N.Y. 2/16/18; civil suit

"On November 17, 1998, relying on a coerced confession supported by false police testimony,* an Albany County jury wrongly convicted...Carl Dukes...of murdering Erick Mitchell...a college student whose apartment [Dukes] helped burglarize four months beforehand. [Dukes] was exonerated of Mitchell's murder in 2016 after another man confessed the precise details of the crime."

[* False police testimony, primarily by Detective Mark DeFrancesco, was also largely responsible for Nickel's wrongful conviction.]

"In 1996, Dukes, who was then 19 years old and living in Albany, agreed to help Matthew Parsons...rob Mitchell, a small-time marihuana dealer and college student Parsons met while working at the SUNY Albany cafeteria.

"On October 4, 1996, Dukes and Parsons, aided by Lavell Jones...Pierre Lyons...and Zakee Abdul-Hameed...broke into Mitchell's apartment while he was not home.

"Four months later, on February 18, 1997 someone shot and killed Mitchell in the vestibule of his apartment building.

"On February 19, 1997, the day after Mitchell's murder, [City of Albany] detectives interviewed Parsons, who they intially arrested for the robbery four months earlier. Although he denied any knowledge of the murder, the detectives tried again on April 30, 1997, interrogating Parsons until they succeeded in coercing him into claiming he 'heard' from an unidentified person that Dukes and Abdul-Hameed had gone back to Mitchell's apartment to look for someone else, unexpectedly ran into Mitchell, and shot him.

"On September 8, 1997, while Dukes sat in the Albany County jail awaiting trial on an unrelated charge, [Albany detectives] ordered him brought to the Albany County Courthouse. When [Dukes] arrived he was met by Bertrand Gould, his public defender. Attorney Gould explained to [Dukes] that [these detectives] wanted to speak with him about an ongoing robbery investigation. [Dukes] was then brought into a conference room where several detectives were waiting. At that point, Attorney Gould announced that 'due to a conflict of interest' he would not remain in the room for the interrogation."*

[* This is extremely fishy -- and virtually unheard of. Dukes is already being represented by this attorney. And yet, his only apparent role is to pave the way for this police interrogation -- and then disappear? One can only imagine what these 'detectives' would have told Gould in order to get him to agree to all of this.]

"Beginning around 9:00 a.m., Detectives [Kenneth] Wilcox and [Ronald] Matos interrogated Dukes about the robbery of Mitchell's apartment. Although they did not read him his Miranda rights, they asked [Dukes] to initial a form stating they had in fact done so.* By 12:30 p.m., [the detectives] convinced [Dukes] to acknowledge his involvement in the robbery and persuaded him to sign a statement Detective Matos had prepared to that effect."

[* Similarly, in Nickel's case, though no Miranda rights were ever read to him, Detective Mark DeFrancesco claimed otherwise in both his pre-trial and trial testimonies. DeFrancesco was with the Albany County Sheriff's Department, whereas the detectives in the Dukes/Jones case were with the City of Albany Police Department. But all of them are, of course, headquarted in the same city. When one also takes into account the Rarick case, in which a federal judge essentially called DeFrancesco a liar for claiming that he had read that suspect his rights, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Albany 'police culture' incorporates a common practice of simply skipping the 'formality' of reading suspects their Miranda rights, and then lying about it in court.]

"Dukes alleges Detective Matos had secretly added language to this written statement* which falsely indicated [Dukes] also had knowledge of Mitchell's murder in February."

[* This is reminiscent -- again, in Nickel's case -- of DeFrancesco 'secretly adding langauge' to Nickel's supposed 'statement' after it had been signed.]

"After taking a break for lunch, Detectives Wilcox and Matos resumed the interrogation, again asking Dukes to initial a form acknowledging his Miranda rights even though they never actually read them to him. The detectives then began to question [Dukes] about Mitchell's murder. [Dukes] repeatedly denied having any involvement in the murder, at one point breaking down in tears.

"Nevertheless Detective Wilcox began to feed Dukes a false narrative in which [Dukes] had gone to Mitchell's apartment with Jones and Lyons, two of the other robbers, and that Jones had shot Mitchell. Detective Wilcox demanded that [Dukes] adopt this story, and threatened him with the death penalty if he refused.* Eventually, [Dukes] relented and signed a statement, again prepared by Detective Matos, which recounted the story Detective Wilcox had pushed onto [Dukes]."

[* At that time, New York State had only recently (re-) adopted the death penalty. (For due process reasons, no death penalties would ever be carried out under that statute; those who had been sentenced to death all had their sentences commuted to life without parole.)]

"After obtaining Dukes' coerced confession, [the detectives] were faced with a problem: [Dukes'] story was inconsistent with the prior coerced statement from Parsons, which claimed Abdul-Hameed (not Jones or Lyons) had been with [Dukes] at Mitchell's apartment the night of the murder. [The detectives] resolved this inconsistency by obtaining a second false corroborating statement from Parsons.

"But [these detectives] weren't done yet. They proceeded to build the murder case against Dukes by eliciting false confessions from Jones and Lyons using the same aggressive interrogation tactics employed against [Dukes]. First, Detectives [Peter] McKenna and [Anthony] Ryan traveled to Brooklyn, where Jones had been arrested during a traffic stop, and coerced him into signing a statement falsely admitting his involvement in Mitchell's murder. In addition these detectives coerced Jones's girlfriend into signing a statement falsely claiming Jones had confessed directly to her. Second, Detectives [Ronald] Matos and [Michael] Sbuttoni traveled to Georgia where they induced Lyons, one of the other robbers, to make yet another false statement implicating [Dukes] and Jones.

"On November 6, 1998, Dukes faced trial in Albany County Court on the robbery and murder charges. No forensic evidence tied [Dukes] to the February murder, and when Parsons was called to testify he recanted his false statement implicating [Dukes]. Instead, the prosecution relied on Detectives Wilcox and Matos, both of whom testified falsely about the circumstances of [Dukes'] interrogation and the validity of his confession."

"On September 3, 2014, 17 years after Dukes' original arrest, police in Ohio arrested [Jeffrey] Conrad, initially identified as a suspect in Mitchell's murder, for the stabbing death of his girlfriend. During an interrogation by the Cuyahoga County police, Conrad confessed to Mitchell's murder, accurately stating numerous details, including the distinctive position in which Mitchell's body had fallen as well as the relatively unique caliber of bullet used."

[The Dukes/Jones case is the only Albany County wrongful conviction that the National Registry of Exonerations has cataloged. ( Nickel's conviction also occurred in Albany County.)] [But the parallels to Nickel's case go a lot farther than that: Just as it appears that Dukes and Jones were involved in the burglary of Mitchell's residence, a far less serious crime than the murder that they were also (and, wrongfully) convicted of, there is some credible evidence of Nickel having committed the far less serious ('sexual abuse') charge of 'simple touching,' whereas, it is patently obvious that he did not commit the graver charges of digital penetration ('aggravated sexual abuse') and oral sex ('sodomy'), the sentences for which were some two to four times longer. ]

from NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):

"[In the October 4, 1996 robbery, the two victims (who were in Mitchell's apartment at the time)] said men forced their way into the apartment at gunpoint, tied them up with rope and then sprayed pepper spray into bags that were placed over their heads. The intruders looted the house and stole a car from the victims. Police suspected the crime was related to the sale of drugs."

"After giving his statement, Jones made several telephone calls to family members which were surreptitiously recorded by police. Jones insisted he was innocent and said he finally decided he had no choice but to give in. He said the police had indicated to him that he could get as little as five or 10 years in prison for the murder.

"Dukes went to trial in Albany County...in November 1998. He was convicted on November 17, 1998, largely on the basis of his confession as well as testimony from two jail inmates, who said Dukes made incriminating statements about being involved in the murder. He was also convicted of robbery and burglary charges arising from the October 1996 crime. He was sentenced to 39 years to life in prison.

"Jones went to trial in Albany County...in May 1999...Jones denied being involved and testified that his confession was false. He said that police threatened to physically assault him during the interrogation. The defense also presented several alibi witnesses who testified that Jones was in New York City on the day and at the time of the murder. On May 26, 1999, the jury convicted Jones of second-degree murder as well as burglary and robbery charges for the October 1996 crime. He was sentenced to 32-1/2 years to life* in prison."

[* Recall that a detective promised Jones that he could serve as little as 5-10 years. In reality, he was sentenced to more than 3 to 7 times that.]

[The Dukes/Jones case is unusual in that both were coerced into giving false confessions.]

[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]