Michael Waithe - Perjury / False Accusation

Waithe, Michael; burglary/unlawful entry; NRE: perjury/false accusation, no crime

[536:171]; 2nd Dept. 12/30/88; affirmed, but one dissenter

"The [prosecution] presented evidence that [Waithe] entered the complainant's apartment without her permission and was seen carrying her portable television towards a half-open window.

""[W] are satisfied that the verdict of guilt was not against the weight of the evidence..."

[from dissent :] "[Waithe was allegedly] one of a group of three men who burglarized the apartment of the complainant...during the early morning hours of January 5, 1985. According to the complainant, she was awakened at 4:30 A.M. by a loud crash and left her bedroom to investigate. From her foyer, she observed the figure of a man in the darkened living room. When she screamed, 'What do you want?' and turned on the light, the man ran toward the apartment door yelling, 'Come on, let's go.' The complainant then went into her kitchen, where the light was already on, and saw a second man carrying her television toward the window. When she yelled, this man turned and dropped the television and ran past her out the apartment door. According to the complainant, when the man turned she looked at his face from approximately four feet away and recognized him as a security guard who worked at the apartment complex. Approximately one week later, she identified [Wathe] as the indvidual whom she had seen in her kitchen and claimed that she had previously seen him on a number of occasions on her way to work during the period from March through November 1985.

"Rather than reporting the burglary at the time of its occurrence, she testified that she went to her brother's house and then waited until the following evening to return to her apartment to investigate whether any of her property had been taken. It was only then that she reported the incident to the police. Moreover, there was no corroborative evidence to establish that a burglary even took place. A police investigation failed to disclose any signs of forced entry, nor any evidence that the apartment was in disarray. Nor were the police able to recover any identifiable fingerprints from either the television or the window. The complainant herself testified that prior to her going to bed on the evening of the burglary, she had locked her apartment door and windows. Although there was testimony that a duplicate key for the front door was kept in the building manager's office, a representative of the security firm which had employed [Waithe] testified that the company's employees did not have keys to individual apartments. Thus, there is no evidence as to how burglars might have entered the apartment.

"[Waithe] testified that a few months prior to the alleged burglary, while he was still employed as a security guard, the complainant had accused him of stealing her car ...Also testifying on [Waithe's] behalf was one of his former co-workers, who indicated that the complainant had offered him money if he would testify against [Waithe]."

NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):

"On January 5, 1985, 39-year-old Delores Taylor called police to report that three men tried to burglarize her apartment in Brooklyn...She identified one of the three as 22-year-old Michael Waithe, a man she suspected had stolen her car several months earlier.

"Waithe was arrested and charged with burglary. He went to trial in Kings County...in January 1987. There was no physical or forensic evidence linking Waithe to the crime. The state's evidence rested primarily on the testimony of Taylor, who identified Waithe -- a resident of the building she lived in -- as one of the burglars."

"Waithe, a native of Barbados with no prior criminal record, testified in his own defense and denied committing the crime. His defense lawyer presented witnesses who testified that Waithe was elsewhere at the time of the crime.

"Nonetheless, on January 8, 1987, Waithe was convicted of burglary. He served 18 months in prison before he was released on parole in 1988.

"In 2011, Waithe went back to Barbados to attend the wedding of his daughter. When he returned, he was stopped at [JFK] Airport and detained because he was a resident alien with a felony conviction. The federal government instituted deportation proceedings and Waithe was later released from detention.

"Waithe's attoeney, Matthew Smalls, requested that the Brooklyn [DA's] Conviction Review Unit investigate the burglary case. An investigator located Taylor -- the woman who said Waithe was one of the burglars -- living in Georgia. Taylor, who was 69 years old, admitted that there was no burglary and that she had falsely accused Waithe. She said she was angry at him because she thought he had stolen her car months earlier.

"On January 30, Brooklyn [DA] Kenneth Thompson appeared in Kings County...Court and filed a motion to have Waithe's conviction vacated. The motion was granted and Thompson dismissed the charge.

"'I think Mr. Waithe has already suffered enough for a crime he didn't commit,' Thompson said. 'Mr. Waithe is the victim of a wrongful conviction. I won't let him be the victim of a wrongful deportation.'

"In September 2015, Waithe filed a claim in the New York Court of Claims and settled for $250,000."

[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]