Reginald Connor and Everton Wagstaffe - Perjury

Connor, Reginald and Wagstaffe, Everton ; NRE: kidnapping; perjury/false accusation, inadequate legal defense, prosecutor misconduct, withheld exculpatory evidence

[631:402] [Connor]; 2nd Dept. 9/18/95; affirmed

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

[992:340] [both]; 2nd Dept. 9/7/14; grants motions to vacate convictions

"Just before 7:00 a.m. on January 1, 1992, the police found the body of a 16-year-old homicide victim on a street in a deserted industrial area in the East New York section of Brooklyn. The victim was only partially clothed, and had been stabbed repeatedly, strangled, and beaten. Subsequently, the police arrested the defendants, following their identification by Brunilda Capella, who was under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time she witnessed the victim being forced into a vehicle.

"At the outset the [County] Court improvidently exercised its discretion in denying those branches of defendants' motions...by invoking the permissive ground for denial set forth in CPL 440.10(3)(a), and finding that the 'defendants could have with due diligence placed on the record before sentencing facts to provide an adequate basis for appellate review, but unjustifiably failed to do so.' There is no indication in the record that the subject documents were disclosed to the defense in time to be used at the Wade [pre-trial] hearing; rather, the prosecutor provided documents to the defnse on the record at the time of jury selection. Moreover, while it is undisputed that the subject documents were included within the disclosure made during jury selection, the record reveals that the prosecutor delivered the subject documents interspersed throughout a voluminous amount of other documentation, without specifically identifying the documents at issue at the time of the delivery."*

[* In other words, although technically complying with its discovery obligations, the prosecution 'buried' this critical information under an avalanche of far less relevant material, hoping the defense would be unable to find the proverbial 'needle in the haystack' in time.]

"As a result, the defendants were not afforded an adequate opportunity to develop a factual record for apellate review on direct appeal and the [County] Court should have exercised its discretion and reached this issue on the merits..."

"The documents at issue -- a Request for Record Check, dated January 1, 1992, concerning the defendant Reginald Connor, and the New York State Police Information Network requests for records pertaining to both defendants -- reveal that the defendants were being investigated by the New York City Police Department prior to the detectives' interview of Capella , a fact that was contrary to the testimony of one of the investigating detectives that the interview with Capella on January 2, 1992, led the police to the defendants.

"The documents call into question whether Capella had provided the detectives with the identities of the defendants or if the detectives, without an evidentiary basis, had identified Connor and Wagstaffe prior to Capella's identification of them, thus bearing negatively upon the credibility of Capella and the investigating detectives."

from Records and Briefs :

[2] "The conviction rests on the testimony of a single eyewitness -- the admittedly unstable, drug-addicted Brunilda Capella -- supported by no probative physical evidence. The linchpin of the prosecution's case was a car that Ms. Capella testified was used to abduct the victim. The car was not owned by defendants, but by Ms. Betty Bonner, who did not know defendants or the victim.

"While defense counsel knew the name of the owner of the car well before the trial, they never sought to contact Ms. Bonner, let alone ask her account of the actual whereabouts of the car in question at the time it was allegedly used for a crime. Had they contacted Ms. Bonner, trial counsel would have learned that the car that Ms. Capella testified was used in the crime -- Ms. Bonner's car -- was parked, locked, and blocked by double-parked cars near a church holding a service attended by Ms. Bonner and her family, miles away from the scene of the crime at the time it was committed. Trial counsel also would have learned that Ms. Bonner had informed police, well before trial, where the car had been on the night of the [3] abduction and murder. This fact is not mentioned in the [County] Court's opinion. None of the police officers filed reports detailing their conversations with Ms. Bonner. Accordingly, this fact was never revealed to the jury. If Ms. Bonner had been contacted by Mr. Connor's trial counsel or asked by anyone to testify, her testimony would have, at the very least, cast grave doubt on the credibility of the only witness to the crime."

NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):

"[Brunilda Capella] identified a Buick Skylark as the car that was used to abduct the victim. Police towed the car in for examination and found a black headband that relatives of [Jennifer] Negron [the victim] said they believed was Negron's. No forensic tests were ever conducted on the headband."

"On January 27, 1993, the jury convicted Wagstaffe and Connor of...kidnapping. The judge refused to permit the jury to consider murder charges because of a lack of evidence implicating Wagstaffe and Connor in Negron's death. Both men were sentenced to 12.5 to 25 years in prison.

"Connor was released on parole in 2004. Wagstaffe remained in prison because he refused to accept any release on parole that would suggest he was involved in the crime or had acknowledged guilt.

"By 2009, DNA tests had been performed on hairs found on the victim's body and revealed DNA profiles of two unknown people, but not Wagstaffe or Connor."

"In 2010, a hearing was held on a motion for a new trial...The car's owner...testified that the headband found in the vehicle actually belonged to her daughter."

"The defense also presented evidence at the hearing that Capella had been providing information to the police on numerous occasions -- from 'seventeen to 20 times'...The defense argued that evidence should have been provided by the prosecution at the trial because it undermined Capella's claim that she delayed reporting the crime because she was too scared to go to the police."

"Connor's lawyer argued at the 2010 hearing that instead of Capella coming forward on her own to implicate Connor and Wagstaffe, the police had presented the two names to Capella and she had agreed to implicate them."

"In October 2013, New York [County] Court Justice Sheryl Parker denied the motion for a new trial."

"In 2017, Connor and Wagstaffe settled their claims for wrongful conviction for $25,578,000, with $6 million coming from the State of New York and the remaining more than $19 million coming from the city of New York. Connor was awarded $11 million and Wagstaffe's settlement was $14,578,000."

[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]