Robert McLaughlin - Inadequate Legal Defense
McLaughlin, Robert; murder; [not on NRE list:] mistaken witness identification, inadequate legal defense, police officer misconduct, witness tampering or misconduct interrogating co-defendant
Suggestibility issues
[480:151]; 2nd Dept. 10/1/84; reversed, due to faulty jury instruction
"TV Drama Revisits Unlikely But True Murder-Case Mixup; Highlight," by Daniel Wise, New York Law Journal, September 19, 1991
"Lawyers who tune in Sunday night to a primetime reenactment of the Bobby McLaughlin case may think some of the scenes involving former presiding Justice in the Second Department, Milton Mollen, were made up out of whole cloth.
"How likely is is that an appellate judge, after serving on a panel that affirmed a conviction for second-degree murder, would subsequently acknowledge some concern that there was a miscarriage of justice?
"But that is exactly what Justice Mollen did in the presence of Jack Newfield, at the time a reporter for the Village Voice, according to Richard Emery, the lawyer who won Mr. McLaaughlin his freedom and who arranged the meeting. Judge Mollen's comments helped stir a wave of publicity in 1985 that undoubtedly created a more receptive climate for Mr. McLaughlin's claims of innocence.
"In July 1986, Mr. McLaughlin was freed after spending 6-1/2 years in pirson for the 1979 murder of a neighborhood acquaintance during a robbery in Brooklyn's Marine Park. Mr. McLaughlin last year won a $1.9 million award in the State Court of Claims for unjust imprisonment.
"Mr. McLaughlin and his foster parents, Harold and Mary Hohne, had a long, frustrating journey through the criminal-justice system before they got a break about the time Justice Mollen...agreed to talk to Mr. Newfield and Mr. Emery, then a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"One of the largest question marks in the case was the tantalizing fact in the trial record, which had gone unexplored either at the original trial or on appeal, that Mr. McLaughlin's co-defendant, identified as the shooter, had previously been arrested with a different Bobby McLaughlin.
"In addition, only one of the 15 youths who were robbed by the pair in Marine Park had been able to identify the defendants, with the vast majority saying they kept their heads down as they had been ordered and that it was too dark. Arrayed against the lone identification witness, Mr. McLaughlin had presented six witnesses saying he was somewhere else at the time of the slaying.:
"Both lawyers and journalists played an important part in turning things around for Mr. McLaughlin. But the element of the story that made it grist for primetime was Mr. Hohne's never-say-die quest to have his foster son freed. It's a morality tale that the little guy can go up against the system and win, said Cynthia Witcom, who wrote the script for Guilty Until Proven Innocent, a two-hour made-for-TV movie which will air nationwide on NBC at 9 p.m. Sunday."
"Mr. Hohne, through his own investigation, aided by friends in the police department, had discovered a link between the confusion over the two Bobbys -- Robert K. McLaughlin and Robert L. McLaughlin -- in the identification of his son, Robert K. It remained for Emery, who had not been involved in either the trial or the appeal, to get concrete proof of the mixup and evidence of a misidentification.
"Aided by a call from Justice Mollen to reopen the case and the publicity [by] WNBC News, [which] ran more than two dozen stories, and a 20/20 segment on the case, Mr. Emery was able to persuade the Brooklyn [DA's] office to retrace the steps by which the police had gotten to Mr. McLaughlin in the first place.
"The prosecution's witness had in fact identified the shooter, William Ferro. When the photo-identification card in the precinct's files on Mr. Ferro was pulled, it listed Robert L. McLaughlin as an accomplice in an earlier crime.
"The officer then went to retrieve te card on Robert L. McLaughlin, but pulled instead the card of Mr. Hohne's foster son, one of three cards in the precinct's file with a variant of the name Robert McLaughlin.
"Despite the improbability that such a mistake could lead to the correct suspect, the prosecution witness...hewed to his identification of Mr. McLaughlin as the person wielding the shotgun during the Marine Park robbery.
"The next turn for Mr. Emery was one many seasoned criminal-defense lawyers would likely view as bordering on the surreal: he was allowed to confront and, in essence, cross-examine [this witness] in the presence of a prosecutor..."
"In a scene depicted in the movie, Mr. Emery told [the witness] 'You know what the truth is. The cops showed you pictures of Ferro and Bobby McLaughlin, who they said had been arrested with Ferro before. That's why you picked Bobby's picture.'
"[The witness], faced with Mr. Emery's reconstruction of events, recanted a short while later, and the movie ends with Mr. McLaughlin finally walking out of court a free man."
"Most viewers will take away from the movie an understanding that it is important that detectives show witnesses an array of photographs, and make no suggstion to a witness that may incriminate a particular suspect."
[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]
