Michael Bumbury - False Accusation
Bumbury, Michael ; sexual assault; NRE: perjury/false accusation, no crime, prosecutor misconduct, withheld exculpatory evidence, misconduct that is not withholding evidence, prosecutor lied in court
[880:44]; 1st Dept. 5/28/09; civil suit
"While [Bumbury] was incarcerated at Rikers Island in 1998 pending a parole violation hearing, an inmate, Joseph Davis , accused him of sexual assault. Following the dismissal of the parole violation charge, [Bumbury] was released on bail, but was returned to custody on December 14, 1999, and shortly thereafter was convicted of sodomy...and sentenced to a prison term of 12 years.
"During the course of the civil action by Davis...the City produced previously undisclosed Unusual Incident Reports generated by the New York City Department of Correction (DOC) memorializing statements of an inmate who claimed that Davis had divulged to him intentions to falsely accuse fellow inmates of sexual assault in order to obtain a transfer to a different cell...On November 5, 2001, Bronx [County] Court vacated the conviction...On March 5, 2002, the indictment against [Bumbury] was dismissed..."
NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):
"On July 9, 1988, Joseph Davis , an inmate at Rikers Island, New York City's main jail complex, reported that he had been sexually assaulted the previous night by his cellmate, 47-year-old William Westly , and another inmate, 23-year-old Michael Bumbury.
"Davis, who was being held on a burglary charge, said an inmate named Bruce Rivers broke up the attack. Davis sought medical treatment and a rape kit was prepared.
"At the time of the crime, Bumbury was being held on a menacing charge. Because he was on parole for a sodomy conviction when he was 15, he was also accused of a parole violation. Westly was being held on a robbery charge.
"Westly and Bumbury were tried together in December 1999...Davis was the sole prosecution witness and no medical evidence was submitted to the jury because no physical evidence linked Westly or Bumbury to the attack."
"[R]eports prepared by the corrections officers on duty that night showed that Davis waited 12 hours after the alleged assault to make a report to jail officers, even though Davis testified that he was distraught and hysterical immediately after the attack and that a female corrections officer had seen his reaction. The jail reports documented an interview with the female officer on duty during the time of the alleged attack in which she said she saw nothing unusual.
"The reports documented numerous other contradictions to Davis's trial testimony.
"At trial, Davis testified that he had not 'filed' a lawsuit against the city. However, the reports showed that at the time of trial, Assistant District Attorney Robert Gonzalez had had repeated contact with Davis's civil attorney and was aware that Davis was already contemplating such a suit. The records undercut the prosecution's argument at trial that Davis was credible because he was not attempting to cash in by suing for damages for the alleged attack.
"In addition to the documents found by the civil lawyers, the lawyers preparing to appeal Westly and Bumbury's convictions also discovered that another inmate at the jail gave a tape-recorded interview to the prosecution before trial. In the interview, the inmate said that he saw Davis and Rivers having sex on the night that Davis later said Westly and Bumbury sexually assaulted him.
"Rivers later signed a sworn affidavit saying that Davis was not assaulted and that Davis told him that if he corroborated Davis's claim of such an assault, they would both get rich."
"Bumbury...filed a lawsuit in the New York Court of Claims seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction, but the case was dismissed. He also filed a separate lawsuit against the Cty of New York that was settled in 2019 for $1.2 million. Westly did not seek compensation."
