Sheldon Thomas convicted over 2004 homicide is discovered harmless as prosecutors set up he had been deliberately misidentified by law enforcement officials utilizing a photograph of one other individual with the identical identify.
(Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office)
A Black man of New York who spent greater than 18 years in jail for a homicide he didn’t commit has been free of jail after prosecutors mentioned a photograph of one other individual with the identical identify led to his wrongful arrest.
Sheldon Thomas was convicted over the 2004 deadly drive-by taking pictures in Brooklyn of 14-year-old Anderson Bercy, whose actual killer stays unknown.
Thomas, now 35, walked out of court docket a free man on Thursday after a decide accepted a request by the Brooklyn District Attorney to vacate the conviction.
Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district legal professional, mentioned in a press release that his workplace’s conviction overview unit discovered that Thomas had been deliberately misidentified by law enforcement officials.
He added that Thomas’ prosecution “was compromised from the very start by grave errors and lack of probable cause” to arrest him.
“The defendant was arrested based on a witness identification of a different person with the same name — a mistake that was first concealed and then explained away during the proceedings,” he mentioned.
“In fact, the reinvestigation concluded that detectives were intent on arresting the defendant and used the faulty identification procedure as pretext.”
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Misidentification
The witness recognized Thomas primarily based on {a photograph} of one other Sheldon Thomas that law enforcement officials pulled from a police database.
Based on her misidentification, police went to the defendant’s deal with and arrested him.
The identical witness later recognized Thomas in a lineup, successfully which means she had recognized two completely different individuals because the perpetrator.
The defective picture identification got here to mild throughout a June 2006 pretrial listening to when Detective Robert Reedy admitted on cross-examination that the defendant’s picture had not been within the lineup.
The decide, nonetheless, discovered that there was possible trigger to arrest Thomas primarily based on “verified information from unknown callers” and the truth that he supposedly resembled the opposite Thomas, investigators mentioned.
Thomas was discovered responsible of second-degree homicide and was sentenced to 25 years to life in jail.
He mentioned he forgave the detectives, witness and prosecutors and thanked the decide as he quashed his conviction, ABC News reported.
“I’ve waited a long time,” Thomas instructed the court docket.
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