Charles Daniels - Officer Misconduct

Daniels, Charles; child sex abuse, attempted murder; NRE: perjury/false accusation, prosecutor misconduct, police officer misconduct, withheld exculpatory evidence, witness tampering or misconduct interrogating co-defendant Suggestibility issues

C3 [88] "In 1979, a ten-year-old boy told police he'd seen a neighborhood man throw a two-year-old child off a three-story building onto the concrete. (The child miraculously survived.) Based on the eyewitness account, Charles Daniels was convicted of attempted second-degree murder and first-degree sodomy. At the time of the crime, Daniels was employed and had never been arrested, and acquaintances testified as to his good character. Suddenly sentenced to six to eighteen years in prison, he was branded a 'baby raper' and subjected to horrible physical abuse and harassment by corrections staff and inmates, who beat him, urinated in his food, and set his cell mattress on fire. [His convictions were reversed; [89] a] probe ultimately exonerated Daniels and cast suspicion on the state's sole eyewitness. It turned out that the youth in question had a record of pychological disturbance and sexual offenses against children."

[453:699]; 2nd Dept. 8/16/82; reversed, due to jury instruction error

"[M.S.], 10 years old, had just finished his lunch, his mother had left the room to go visiting, and he was all alone in the fifth-floor apartment. He heard a scream and, as he looked out the living room window onto the third floor roof of the adjacent building, some 50-100 feet away, he [supposedly] saw a man wearing blue Lee pants and a plaid shirt, dragging a little baby across the roof. As he watched, they disappeared for a few minutes behind an incinerator, but soon reappeared, and, as he looked on, the man pushed the now naked infant off the roof and then ran back into the building."

"Within five or six minutes, according to his testimony, [M.S.] saw Housing Authority Police Officers Mackey and Moss, whom he knew, arrive at the scene on the third floor roof and, at his call, they came over to [M.S.'s] apartment and questioned the boy. In substance, [M.S.] described the tragic events he had just witnessed, and offered a description of the perpetrator that he repeated the following day to [NYPD] Detective Reilly of the Queens Sex Crime Squad: male, black, medium Afro, black hair, medium skin tone, five foot five inches tall, wearing a blue striped shirt, dungarees, and black sneakers, 24 years of age. That description would fit innumerable young black males, but it is at substantial variance with the actual physical appearance of [Daniels], who at the time, was 35 years old and who then wore a large wild Afro hair style '[l]ike sticking all up' in a very unruly and messy fashion.

"In the days that followed, [M.S.] was interviewed at both the local police precinct where he viewed police photographs on a machine and at another location in the county. He did not, however, recant the description he had given, but instead said that he did not know the perpetrator's name, and, in fact, told Detective Reilly twice that he had never seen the perpetrator before.

"On September 27, seven days after the crime, the young [M.S.] was interviewed at his grandmother's house in Far Rockaway. Present were Detectives Miele and Reilly of the [NYPD], and Detective Washington of the Housing Authority Police. There, for the first time, and in response to a suggestive question posed by Miele, 'Was it Charles?,'* [M.S.] answered in the affirmative and said he knew Charles' last name -- Daniels.

[* It is not at all clear what prompted Detective Miele to ask this immensely suggestive question. This one comment essentially sealed Daniels' fate. Much the same has happened in countless other cases of wrongful child sex abuse (and other) convictions. This is why avoiding suggestiveness at all costs is so vitally important when dealing with child witnesses.]

"[M.S.], the [prosecution's] sole identifying witness, the three previous years a student assigned to a class for emotionally handicapped children,* lived with his mother in a Housing Authority project in Queens County."

[* Although certainly not a term that would be used today, it would be an apt descrition of 'Arthur' in the Nickel case as well.]

"Charles Daniels...resided in an apartment in the same building, on the same floor across the hall from the young [M.S.]. The two were casual neighbors for about three years, and young [M.S.] was familiar with and saw Daniels 'every day.' Daniels never in any manner threatened [M.S.] nor did he ever strike him.

"Upon the trial young [M.S.] testified that at first he gave the police what he called a 'phony desciption' of the perpetrator because he was scared that he too might be thrown off the roof. He further testified that at the time he accused [Daniels] of the crime, he, [M.S.], was at his grandmother's house and 'I wasn't really that much scared and I didn't want it to happen to no one else.' There was no doubt in his mind at trial that [Daniels] was the man who threw the baby off the roof and the boy was the only incriminating witness presented by the prosecution.

"Charles Daniels...testified that he was gainfully employed; that he had never been arrested for or convicted of a crime;* and that he was single and lived with his mother in the same building and on the same floor as young [M.S.], whom he had casually known since the boy moved into the building some three years before the trial."

[* This was also true of Nickel. ]

"Daniels denied categorically and unequivocally that he assaulted any child at the time and place charged or at any other time. His testimony traced, in some detail, his activities shortly before and at and about the time on September 20, 1978 when he allegedly committed the crimes charged against him. In substance, he stated that the day in question was a Wednesday, his day off from work. On that morning he returned home from a neighborhood laundromat between 11:45 and 12:00 o'clock noon. He talked to his mother, who was preparing their lunch, and about 12:30 P.M. he took his radio and descended to where he sat on a bench directly in front of his apartment building. In response to his mother's call about 12:35 he went back upstairs, took 10 or 12 or 15 minutes to eat a sandwich, again took his radio and went directly downstairs to resume his position on the bench.

"It was [Daniels'] testimony that when he first arrived at the bench before lunch he noticed that a Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Butler were seated there. After a while one Bennie Hill 'came out and sat beside me.' He testified that after lunch he rejoined Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Butler at the bench and that they were joined in turn by one Wilbert Diselle.

"[Daniels'] witnesses corroborated his chronology.

"Mrs. Frances Daniels, [Charles'] mother, testified that at about 12:25 to 12:30 she saw her son sitting on a bench in front of the apartment house with Bennie Hill. From the window she beckoned to him to come in for lunch. She said that she had not asked witnesses to testify for her son but that, as a matter of fact, '[p]eople told me that they were on the bench with him.'

"Bennie Hill, a salesman and formerly a clinical laboratory technologist with no criminal convictions, said that at about 12:15 P.M. he looked out his window from his first-floor apartment in the same building and saw [Daniels] sitting on the bench with his large radio. Hill got dressed and joined [him] at about 12:20 or 12:30 P.M. He testified that people were 'coming and going,' but he specifically said that [Daniels], Gladys Butler and Sadie Jones were sitting there. He said that he and [Daniels] sat on the bench until the police arrived at 1:30 or 2:00 P.M. He recalled the date -- September 20, 1978 -- because 'the area [was] flooded with police and detectives.' After [Daniels] was arrested, he, Hill, went to Mrs. Daniels and volunteered to testify.

"Wilbert Diselle testified that he had never been convicted of a crime. He said that he saw [Daniels], Bennie Hill, Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Jones sitting on the bench in front of the building at 1:00 P.M., at which time he joined them. About 10 minutes later, according to his testimony, 'the police cars [came] swarming around.' It was Diselle's testimony that he and [Daniels] remained on the bench discussing baseball and a recent prize fight from 1:00 P.M. until about 2:45 P.M. and that the women were seated at the other end of the bench. The ladies carried on their own conversation. Diselle said that he and [Daniels] lived in the same building but were not really more than acquaintances, in that they had never visited each other or gone out together. He said that shortly after [Daniels'] arrest he, Diselle, went to [Daniels'] mother and volunteered to testify on his behalf.

"Gladys Butler (not related to Carolyn Butler, the victim's mother), who had no prior arrests, likewise corroborated the presence of [Daniels], Mrs. Jones and Bennie Hill on the bench outside of the building at or about 12:15 P.M. She recalled the time because she was feeding her granddaughter and looked at the time. She said that she and [Daniels] were not friends but she knew who he was. She specified that [Daniels] came out to the bench some minutes after she did."

"In the face of such seemingly persuasive testimony, the question is, how did the jury return a verdict of guilty?"

"In determining the strength of the [prosecution's] case it is thus a clear and reasonable inference that the crime took place sometime between 1:30 P.M. and 1:45 P.M. on that hot, sunny September afternoon, at precisely the time [Daniels] was seated on a bench with his alibi witnesses."

"[T]he Court's charge [i.e., instruction] on identification...was fundamentally flawed."

"[T]he Court neglected to charge [i.e. instruct] that the prosecution must disprove the alibi beyond a reasonable doubt..."

from NRE synopsis (by Spencer Burke)

"Convicted of attempted murder...and sodomy...Daniels was exonerated four years later after the Appellate Division...reversed the decision and ordered a new trial. Queens County [DA] John J. Santucci agreed to drop the charges. Suppressed evidence regarding the unreliability of the prosecution's sole witness, unfair jury instructions, and newly discovered medical evidence regarding the victim all contributed to Daniels's exoneration."

"The jury was not instructed to scrutinize the testimony of the eyewitnesses to the same degree that they were told to scrutinize the alibi. Furthermore, the jury was not instructed that the prosecution had the burden to disprove Daniels's alibi beyond a reasonable doubt."

"The Legal Aid Society agreed to represent Daniels and appealed his conviction in 1982. In reinvestigating the case, Daniels' attorneys found that [M.S.] had been undergoing treatment because he was emotionally disturbed. They also learned that medical evidence suggested the two-year-old boy, who recovered fully from the injuries sustained during this crime, may not have been raped by an adult and had not actually fallen from the roof. Legal Aid challenged the credibility of [M.S.'s] testimony, and the Appellate Division...found the original jury instructions insufficient for Daniels to receive a fair trial. On August 16, 1982, the Court reversed the decision and ordered a new trial.

"Following this reversal, [DA] Santuccci agreed to dismiss the charges against Daniels."

"After his release, Daniels sued New York City for his wrongful conviction and imprisonment. In January 1985, the City settled out of court with Daniels for $600,000."

[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]