Derrick Hamilton - Perjury, Officer Misconduct, Withheld evidence

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

S31 "In 1993, Derrick Hamilton was put on trial for murder. His defense rested on alibi witnesses, who ultimately did not appear at trial -- one due to illness, the other out of fear.

"Before sentencing, a motion was made to set aside the verdict based on the recantation of the prosecution's chief witness, the victim's girlfriend. The witness now asserted that she was not present at the crime scene and testified under duress. A defense witness materialized who confirmed it.

"But in the face of the investigating detective's testimony, the hearing judge did not find her recantation credible. So the conviction stood.

"In the following year, Hamilton filed the first of his post-conviction motions. He put forward a newly discovered eyewitness who claimed that [Hamilton] did not commit the crime.

"In addition, Hamilton sought to include the testimony of two new alibi witnesses not noticed [i.e., announced ]...or available at trial. They both placed [Hamilton] in Hartford, Conn. at the time of the crime. However, the trial court would not expand the motion hearing to allow the new witnesses to testify.

"The judge did not credit the eyewitness and found the new alibi witness procedurally barred from being heard. Following denial of his direct appeal and appeal from the post-conviction motion, Hamilton filed...motions about evidence of alternate suspects relayed to the police before trial that were also denied."

K13 "A Brooklyn man who said he was framed by a detective, which led to a wrongful murder conviction and more than 20 years of incarceration, has been cleared of the crime after prosecutors deemed the case's sole eyewitness unreliable.

"Brooklyn [ADA] Mark Hale told...Justice Raymond Guzman the prosecution could no longer stand by Derrick Hamilton's conviction for the 1991 shooting.

"The lone eyewitness, Jewel Smith, was 'as a whole unreliable, incredible, and for the most part untruthful,' said Hale, adding that using her as a witness violated Hamilton's procedural due process rights.

"Hamilton, now 49, was paroled from state prison in 2011.

"The vacatur is the latest in a growing list of convictions that [DA] Kenneth Thompson has deemed unjust. Since Thompson became the borough's top prosecutor last year, his office has undone 10 convictions and dropped the appeal of a habeas grant to an 11th man.

"Embattled detective Louis Scarcella, now retired, worked on four of those cases, including Hamilton's.

"The Conviction Review Unit still has about 100 more cases to review, 70 of which are linked to Scarcella. It is one of the nation's most ambitious efforts to determine whether old cases were handled properly.

"In a statement, Thompson said, 'The people of Brooklyn elected me to ensure that justice is done and that is what my decision reflects.' He said his office reviewed the crime scene, as well as medical and scientific evidence before concluding the witness account was unreliable.

"The underlying case arose from the fatal shooting of Nathaniel Cash in Bedford Stuyvesant. At the scene of the shooting, Jewel Smith, who was Cash's girlfriend, had told a detective that she had not seen the shooter. Hamilton said Scarcella pressured her into changing her story."

from NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):

"Shortly after midnight on January 24, 1991, 26-year-old Nathaniel Cash was fatally shot at his apartment building...in Brooklyn...."

"Cash's girlfriend, Jewel Smith, told Detective Frank DeLouisa that she had bailed Cash out of jail on January 3 and spent time with him at his apartment before going to a store. When she returned, he was lying on the ground after being shot.

"Smith changed her account, however, to implicate 25-year-old Derrick Hamilton in the shooting. She later said that Detective Louis Scarcella told her that if she did not accuse Hamilton she would be charged with the crime herself. Hamilton had been paroled in August 1990 -- about four months before Cash was killed -- after serving a seven-year prison term for convictions of manslaughter, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon.

"In March 1991, the police arrested Hamilton in New Haven, Connecticut at a hair salon that Hamilton jointly owned with Alphonso White. Hamilton was charged with second-degree murder.

"Hamilton went to trial in Kings County...in July 1992. Smith identified Hamilton as the gunman. She said Hamilton shot Cash and Cash chased after Hamilton before he collapsed.

"The defense had listed two alibi witnesses, but neither were called. One of the witnesses, Mattie Dixon, the wife of Alphonso White, later said that she and her husband, Alphonso, did not testify because police in New Haven, for whom White had acted as an informant in the past, threatened to arrest Alphonso if they testified for Hamilton in Brooklyn. In fact, Dixon later said in a sworn affidavit, she and her husband had collected hotel records showing that Hamilton was at a New Haven hotel at the time of the crime.

"On July 7, 1992, a jury convicted Hamilton of second-degee murder. Before sentencing, Smith recanted her testimony, and the defense learned for the first time about a statement she gave to police under the name 'Karen Smith' in which she said that she was not present when Cash was shot. At an evidentiary hearing on the motion to vacate the conviction, Smith testified she only implicated Hamilton after Scarcella told her she would be charged with the murder if she did not change her account.

"The motion was denied in 1993 and Hamilton was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

"Over the next two decades, Hamilton filed a series of motions attempting to overturn his conviction, but all were denied.

"In 1994, he sought to vacate the conviction on the basis of an affidavit from a witness who said that two other men -- Amir Johnson and 'Money Will' -- shot Cash. In 1995, while that motion was pending, two more witnesses came forward and said Hamilton was at a going-away party at a hotel in New Haven for a man who was going to prison.

"One of the witnesses, Kelly Turner, was working as a talent agent at the time of the crime but had since become a decorated police officer in New Haven. She provided a sworn statement that she was with Hamilton at the party until 1 or 2 a.m. -- well after the shooting in Brooklyn. The other witness, Davette Mahan, said she was Turner's assistant and that she also saw Hamilton and Turner together, discussing business, at the party.

"Hamilton sought to expand his motion to vacate the conviction to include Turner and Mahan, but the judge refused because Turner and Mahan were not on Hamilton's alibi witness list prior to trial.

"An evidentiary hearing was held on the claim that Amir Johnson and 'Money Will' shot Cash, but the judge said the witness was not credible and denied the motion.

"In 1998, another hearing was held with testimony from an additional witness who said 'Money Will' shot Cash. That witness also was not believed.

"In 2009, Hamilton filed a motion seeking a new hearing to allow Turner and Mahan to testify in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing witnesses to testify to actual innocence if they had not been previously allowed to testify. The prosecution opposed that motion as procedurally barred. While the motion was still pending, two more witnesses came forward to corroborate Turner and Mahan's statements.

"One of those witnesses was Mattie Dixon, the wife of Alphonso White (who had since died). Dixon provided hotel records showing that she and her husband had rented a room for Hamilton at the hotel on the night of the party and that a banquet room was reserved for that night. In a sworn affidavit, Dixon said that the detective for whom her husband worked as an informant became angry for [him] 'being Derrick's alibi' and that the detective told them to 'forget about Derrick Hamilton' or go to jail.

"In August 2011, the motion for a hearing to allow the witnesses to testify was denied. In December 2011, Hamilton was released from prison on parole after previously being denied parole because he would not admit that he committed the murder."

"Earlier in 2011, Kings County [DA] Chares Hynes created a Conviction Integrity Unit and invited defense attorneys to present cases in which innocent defendants may have been convicted."

"[Around mid-2013], The New York Times published an article accusing Scarcella of misconduct in many investigations: fabricating evidence, coercing witnesses and concealing evidence of defendants' innocence...The report prompted the Brooklyn Conviction Integrity Unit to begin to re-investigate 57 cases in which Scarcella was involved.

"In January 2014, the Appellate Division...in an unprecedented ruling, reversed the trial court in Hamilton's case. The appeals court eliminated a procedural barrier to criminal appellate claims to allow an assertion of 'actual innocence' to be heard. Hamilton's case was remanded to the Kings County...Court for a hearing.

"At that time, Kenneth Thompson, the newly-elected Kings County [DA], assigned the case to his Conviction Review Unit. In January 2015, Thompson concluded, on the basis of a re-investigation of the case, that Hamilton was innocent.

"The re-investigation showed that the medical evidence contradicted Smith's claim that Cash was shot in the chest and then chased after the man who shot him. In fact, the medical examiner's office said Cash was shot in the back and that the nature of the wound was such that he would have died almost instantly. In addition, ballistics showed that more than one gun was used in the shooting.

"On January 9, 2015, Thompson and Hamilton's defense lawyer jointly asked that Hamilton's conviction be vacated. The motion was granted and the charge was dismissed.

"By that time, the review had expanded to about 100 murder cases in Brooklyn, including about 60 of Scarcella's cases.

"Hamilton subsequently filed a claim for compensation with the New York Court of Claims and in 2016 received $3.75 million. In 2015, Hamilton filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking damages for his wrongful conviction. In November 2019, he settled the lawsuit against the cities of New York and New Haven for $7 million."

[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]