Donnesia Brown - Perjury / False Accusation
Brown, Donnesia ; weapon possession/sale; NRE: plea, perjury/false accusation, no crime, police officer misconduct, withheld exculpatory evidence, misconduct that is not withholding evidence
2016 WL 3130593; N.D.N.Y. 6/12/18; civil suit
"On January 21, 2016, Defendant [C.O. Matthew] Cornell singled out [Brown] for a 'random' pat frisk...Cornell then received permission to conduct a 'strip frisk' in a separate and isolated room...Cornell claimed that [Brown] voluntarily surrendered an eight-inch-long sharpened weapon that he had stored in his posterior...[Brown] claims that...Cornell lied about the incident and planted the weapon on him.
"Although [Brown] was initially scheduled to be released from prison on August 26, 2016, for his underlying conviction, he was indicted over the incident with the weapon...On October 11,2016, [he] pleaded guilty to avoid a lengthier sentence and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of two-to-four years...On October 13, 2016, [he] appealed his conviction.
"In December 2016, the Inspector General for DOCCS raided Auburn CF and uncovered multiple items of contraband in the possession of prison guards ...Cornell allegedly admitted to the Cayuga County District Attorney that he had planted at least one weapon on an inmate...The District Atorney provided this information to [Brown's] counsel and the judge presiding over [his] appeal..."
"On January 18, 2017, Justice Mark A. Fandrich vacated [Brown's] conviction."
NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):
"After a disciplinaryhearing, [Brown] was sent to solitary confinement [at Auburn C.F.] for six months."
"Brown later contended in an interview with a journalist that Cornell and another guard came to his cell and said they received a report tha he had a weapon. They patted him down and found nothing. They then took him out of the cell and into a nearby room to perform a strip search. According to Brown, Cornell said, 'This ain't personal. You got a weapon?'
"When Brown said he did not, Cornell replied, 'You got one now.' Brown said that Cornell then opened the door of the room, reached out to a ledge outside, and grabbed an object wrapped in black cloth. Cornell opened it to show a toothbrush that had been sharpened into a weapon."
"[Cayuga County DA Jon] Budelman asked a Cayuga County...judge to vacate the convictions of Brown and four other inmates , all of whom had pled guilty to similar crimes even though they claimed at the time that the weapons had been planted on them. In all five cases, Cornell was the guard who said he found the weapons."
"On January 19, 2017, Brown's conviction was vacated and the charge was dismissed. That same month, the convictions of Thomas Ozzborn , Naythen Aubain , José Muniz , and Sean Gaines were dismissed."
[Brown lost his civil suit.]
[ Matthew Cornell is hardly the only c.o. at Auburn (and elsewhere) who routinely planted weapons on inmates. (See Department of Corruptions section.)]
[There are yet more cases in which a correctional officer helped to convict innocent people. Also see Thomas Bianco , where an Auburn lieutenant claimed at trial that the man he saw with the subsequent murder victim had -- like Bianco -- 'high cheekbones' -- despite previously stating that he had never seen the man's face because the latter had his back to him. And then we have the case of Kin-Jin ('David') Wong . There, it was a c.o. who coached a witness to provide more damning testimony.]
[All emphases added.]
