Cy Greene - Mistaken Identity, Perjury, Inadequate Defense

Greene, Cy; murder; NRE: mistaken witness identification, perjury/false accusation, inadequate legal defense, prosecutor misconduct, police officer misconduct, withheld exculpatory evidence, misconduct that is not withholding evidence, witness tampering or misconduct interrogating co-defendant

Suggestibility issues

2010 WL 1936224; E.D.N.Y. 5/12/10; civil suit

"In 1985...Greene was convicted...of the [stabbing] murder of John Choi on a subway platform in Brooklyn. Greene spent 22 years in prison until his conviction was vacated in 2006 after a state judge concluded that Greene's trial counsel...[Lewis] Cohen...did not provide him with effective assistance of counsel...Cohen admitted that he did not interview several witnesses identified in police reports. He also admitted that he did not listen to the audiotape of the prosecution's pre-trial interview of Jae Hark Kim, the prosecution's only witness to identify Greene as Choi's killer...Cohen's failure to investigate and uncover this evidence, coupled with the prosecution's 'limited proof' at trial establishing Greene as Choi's murderer, led the state court to conclude that Greene did not receive a fair trial. Greene's conviction was vacated and the Brooklyn [DA] dismissed all charges.

"Greene, who is 5'2" tall, alleges...that the City...intentionally concealed from the grand jury Kim's pre-trial statements to the police that Choi's killer was 6' ...and...intentionally omitted from police reports statements by a witness that he saw three Spanish-speaking men running from the scene of the crime who were between 5'8"...and 5'10" tall."

2012 WL 5932676; E.D.N.Y. 11/27/12; civil suit

"[Greene] aleges that 'as established in the criminal case, it was information obtained fron one Mark Best that purportedly led detectives...to seek out and arrest Cy Greene.

"[Greene alleges] multiple instances of police and prosecutorial misconduct including: 1) 'failure to disclose that a prime suspect, Mark [Best's] brother Lenny Best, had been identified...as having fled' from the crime scene immediately after the crime; 2) 'falsification of a...follow-up police report...'; and 3) 'failure to disclose that Lenny Best escaped from a police car when he was being taken in for questioning...'"

from NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):

"Shortly after 4 p.m. on June 14, 1983, John Choi and a friend, Jae Hark Kim, were about to get on the subway at Nostrand and Church Avenues in Brooklyn when a group of black men robbed them at knifepoint. Choi was fatally stabbed in the chest.

"A man selling pantyhose outside the subway entrance saw the attackers flee and spotted a knife on the subway stairs. He picked it up by grasping it with a piece of cellophane.

"Kim, who was 5 feet, 4 inches tall, told police at first that the man who stabbed Choi was six feet tall and then, in a second interview with a detective, said the stabber was 5 feet, 9 inches tall.

"He also gave a statement to a prosecutor that was tape-recorded in which he described the stabber as a 'tall guy.'

"Several other people who saw men running from the subway gave varying descriptions of their heights, ranging from 5 feet, 5 inches to six feet.

"An off-duty cab driver said that about 4:45 p.m., three black men, all of them out of breath, got into his cab a few blocks from the subway entrance and demanded to be driven to Flatbush Avenue because they had 'a problem.' When he said he was off-duty, one of them pushed $4 through the slot in the plexi-glass divider and so he drove them to Flatbush Avenue where they got out and walked away. The cab driver told police that the men were speaking Spanish and were all between 5 feet, 8 inches and 5 feet, 10 inches tall.

"Another witness told police that he saw three men run from the subway and that he knew them to be pickpockets who worked in that area. He viewed police mug shots and identified Lenny Best, Joseph Ross and Ronald Blanding.

"On June 15, police arrested Best and were taking him to a police station when he escaped from their patrol car and they could not find him. No police report of the escape was ever made. Police instead changed their report to show that the witness had identified Ross, Blanding and Eric Tidwell -- but that he left before the crime occurred.

"On June 16, police picked up Mark Best. During questioning, Best went from being a potential suspect to a witness when he told police he was at the subway station and saw 19-year-old Cy Greene, whom he knew, stab Choi and flee. Best then picked out a photograph of Greene for police and told them where Greene lived.

"On June 21, 1983, Greene was arrested, despite his claim that he was in another part of Brooklyn with his sister-in-law at the time of the crime. Larry Williams, who was visiting Greene, also was arrested. While they were in a holding cell, police brought Kim so he could view them prior to them being put in a lineup."

[Known as a 'show-up' procedure, this was extremely suggestive.]

"Kim identified both men in a lineup in which all the participants were sitting down."*

[* Why? It's not as if the crime were committed -- or the witnesses previously saw them -- sitting down.]

"Williams and Greene were indicted on June 24, 1983 on charges of second-degree murder and robbery.

"In May 1985, they went on trial and Kim was the sole prosecution witness to identify Greene.

"The defense contended that Greene was innocent because he was 5 feet, 2 inches tall -- as much as 10 inches shorter than Kim's initial description. Prosecutors argued that Kim made an error because he was of Korean descent and only understood measurements of height in terms of meters and centimeters."*

[* This is a disingenuous argument. There is no evidence that Choi said anything along the lines of, 'I don't understand height in terms of feet and inches,' or, 'the killer was about __ meters and ___ centimeters tall.' He said he was about 6 feet (which is a bit under 2 meters).]

"On May 8, 1985, Greene was convicted of second-degree murder and robbery. Williams was acquitted of murder and convicted of robbery. * On May 31, 1985, Greene was sentenced to concurrent terms of 15 years to life on the second-degree murder conviction and two to six years on the robbery conviction. Williams also was sentenced to prison."

[* Williams is not listed in the NRE.]

"On April 2, 1990, the...Appellate Division upheld Greene's conviction.

"Greene eventually enlisted the help of attorney Myron Beldock, who had helped exonerate Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter of a murder conviction in 1985 and later helped exonerate one of the men wrongfully convicted in the Central Park jogger case.

"By then, Williams, who had been paroled in 1994, was in federal custody and later convicted of operating a cocaine distribution ring in the Bronx and sentenced to prison again. He did not pursue an innocence claim for the robbery conviction.

"In December 2003, Beldock filed a petition for a state writ of habeas corpus. The petition alleged that prior to Greene's trial, the prosecution provided the defense with a redacted transcript of Kim's audio-taped interview which omitted Kim's statement that the stabber was 'a tall guy.' "The petition alleged that prosecutors and police had withheld from the defense that the name Eric Tidwell had been substituted for the name of Lenny Best after Best escaped the police patrol car, as well as evidence that other witnesses in addition to Kim described the men as taller than Greene, and said that they spoke Spanish -- which Greene did not.

"The petition also alleged that Greene's trial attorney had failed to investigate the case to find witnesses who would have testified that the men seen fleeing the subway were taller than 5 feet, 2 inches.

"Subsequently, Greene requested a DNA test on the knife that was recovered at the crime scene. A test detected DNA on the knife that was not Choi's and was not Greene's. In addition, Mark Best recanted his identification of Greene in a sworn affidavit.

"On January 4, 2006, Judge Michael Pesce set aside Greene's conviction, ruling that Greene had received ineffective assistance of counsel, and ordered Greene released from prison. The prosecution appealed the decision and on February 13, 2007, the trial court decision was upheld. The prosecution's motion for leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals was denied and on June 11, 2007, the Kings County [DA's] Office dismissed the charges.

"Greene filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking compensation, but the case was dismissed in 2017. He also filed a claim for compensation in the New York Court of Claims. That claim was dismissed in 2021."

[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]