Gregory Counts & VanDyke Perry - Perjury / False Confession

Counts, Gregory AND Perry, VanDyke ; sexual assault, kidnaping; NRE: perjury / false accusation, no crime

[Counts] [632:4]; 1st Dept. 10/3/95; affirmed

"We reject [Counts's] contention, based on the forensic scientist's conclusion that the DNA isolated from the semen stain on complainant's clothing did not belong to [Counts], that the evidence of his guilt on the rape and sodomy counts was insufficient...We note the absence of [Counts's] DNA in the semen sample was readily explained: complainant testified that she did not know whether [Counts] had ejaculated during the sexual assault and that she had engaged in sexual intercourse with her boyfriend on the evening before and the morning of the day of the attack."

[Wait a second. So, they did test the semen stain to see if it matched Counts. It did not. Why didn't they then see if it was the boyfriend's? (Perhas they did do this, but actually found that it didn't match him either.) This Court seems astonishingly uninterested in the question of whose semen it actually was.]

[Counts] 2002 WL 562646; S.D.N.Y. 4/16/02; writ denied

"[Counts] and his codefendant, [VanDyke Perry]*, were charged with acting in concert against a single victim.

[* This decision actually cites the co-defendant's name as Perry VanDyke.]

"A third perpetrator (named Leonard) was allegedly involved in the crime, but he had not been arrested as of the time of the trial. The supposed victim testified that her boyfriend sold drugs with [Perry] and Leonard, and that in the Fall of 1990 Leonard and [Counts]...beat up her boyfriend after telling her that he was blameworthy because some drug money was 'short'...On a later date, she heard that her boyfriend had shot and wounded [Perry]...On the evening of January 17, 1991, as she approached a subway station in Queens, [Perry], Leonard, and [Counts] supposedly kidnaped and then raped and sodomized her while they drove around Manhattan and tried to force her to reveal the whereabouts of her boyfriend...She testified that [Counts] was the one who first approached her and forced her at knifepoint into the car...and that he sodomized and raped her more than once, in the back seat of the car and also outside the car, in Central Park..."

"Richard Cunningham, a forensic scientist retained by the state, performed a DNA test on a semen stain found on the victim's panties did not match with the DNA of either of the two men who had been arrested.

"A trial, the trial attorneys for [Perry and Counts]...pointed to the lack of physical evidence to support the victim's story (for example, lack of bruises, and her outer clothing was not kept as evidence). In addition, they argued that the victim had a motive to protect the life of her boyfriend (because she knew that he had shot [Perrry] and that he owed drug money which both defendants were demanding from him)."

NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):

"On May 7, 2018, Gregory Counts and VanDyke Perry were exonerated of a 1991 rape and kidnaping in New York City by DNA tests and their accuser's admission that no rape and kidnaping ever occurred.

"The dismissal of the charges culminated in a several year re-investigation of the case that began in 2012. Counts, who was serving a prison term of 16 to 48 years, wrote to the Innocence Project in New York in 2010 asking for help and in 2011, the Innocence Project agreed to take up his case. Ultimately, the Office of the Appellate Defender, representing Perry, who had been paroled in 2001 after serving more than 10 years in prison, joined with the Innocence Project to request that the [Manhattan DA's] Office Conviction Integrity Program re-investigate the case.

"In April 2018, after new DNA tests had identified sperm in the accuser's underwear as belonging to a man who died in 2011, the woman admited her account was fabricated.

"The lie began on January 18, 1991, the woman said, after she had smoked crack with a john all day, had sex with him in exchange for money, but he had not paid her. The woman said her boyfriend would make her prostitute herself and had beaten her previously when she came home without money. She lied about being raped because she feared her boyfriend would beat her."

"The third man [apparently the 'Leonard' cited above] was never arrested, although the police knew his identity. Police never seized or searched the third man's car for fingerprints, semen, hair or other evidence even though the car was parked in his yard and the woman claimed that much of the sexual assault occurred in that vehicle."

[This is very fishy: Either the detectives were spectacularly incompetent, or, they had grave doubts about whether this woman was telling the truth.]

"Before trial, DNA tests on sperm from the woman's underwear excluded both Perry and Counts. After the prosecution informed the woman of the test results, she then claimed she had unprotected sex with her boyfriend just prior to being abducted and raped -- although she had told the doctor at the hospital they used condoms."*

[* If this information was not provided to defense counsel, then the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence. If it was provided, then we have an inadequate legal defense. ]

"Her story had numerous inconsistencies -- she told the doctor at the hospital that she was raped in Morningside Park, but told the police the attacks occurred in Central Park. She gave varying accounts of how many times times each attacker raped her and the manner of the assaults. She said Counts, who was 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 260 pounds, had punched her in the face repeatedly. The physician who examined her, however, found no injuries or trauma to her face or body."

"[In prison, Counts] refused to participate in a sex offender program or admit his involvement in the crime."

"On August 14, 2017, Counts was finally released on parole." [It appears he would have first been eligible for parole in 2008, but was likely denied several times due to us refusal to 'accept resposibility.']

"In February 2018, the third man ['Leonard'] who had been named by the woman in 1991 was finally located. The man said he never raped anyone and that he had spent much of his life fearful of being arrested for a crime he did not commit. He said that he had a brown car (the car the woman said was used to kindap her) and it was inoperable at the time. The car was a small two-door vehicle and virtually the entire back seat was occupied by a large stereo speaker.

"The man confirmed that he, Perry, and Counts had beaten up the woman's boyfriend for failing to pay a drug debt, and that the boyfriend had shot Perry in the foot after the confrontation."

"[The supposed victim said that her] boyfriend said 'their problems would go away' if she accused them of raping her. She said her boyfriend planned it all out and told her what to say because he owed drug money to them."

"In 2019, Counts received $5.75 million in compensation through the New York Court of Caims and later received $8.25 millon in a settlement from the City of New York."

"Perry...received $1.5 million in compensation from the New York State Court of Claims and $3.5 million in compensation from the City of New York.

"After Perry was released on parole and before he was exonerated, he began spending time with his family in Vancouver, Washington. On two occasions in 2008, he was charged with and pled guilty to failing to register as a sex offender. In one case, he was sentenced to 14 days in jail and in the other, he was sentenced to six moths in jail. In June 2019, those cases were vacated and the charges were dismissed."