Nix 90 cases linked to cop – B’klyn DA
Brooklyn prosecutors will ask judges to dismiss 90 drug convictions in which an undercover officer later charged with perjury served as a crucial witness, the district attorney’s office announced Wednesday.
The cop, Joseph Franco, 48, was charged with numerous counts of perjury in Manhattan in 2019 for falsely claiming that defendants sold drugs, prosecutors said.
A recent review by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office found that Franco (inset) was a key witness in 90 drug cases in their borough while working as a plainclothes officer from 2004 to 2011.
None of the cases revealed any misconduct — but District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced he would toss the convictions anyway.
“Knowingly and repeatedly framing innocent people obliterates the credibility of any police officer and proving perjury in such circumstances is rare. After a grand jury reviewed the evidence and indicted former Detective Franco, I have lost confidence in his work,” said Gonzalez in a statement.
Of the 90 cases that the DA’s office is seeking to overturn, 27 are felony offenses and 63 are misdemeanors.
Most of the felonies are for criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third or fifth degree, while the misdemeanors are mostly for criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree.
The longest sentence served was a three-year stint in state prison, but most of the convicts did less than a year, Gonzalez said.
Franco was fired from the NYPD last May. He is still awaiting trial in the Manhattan case, where he faces 26 counts of perjury for his botched police work.
In the Manhattan case, prosecutors found video footage of Franco that directly countered his claims that he had seen people selling drugs.
Gonzalez noted that in many of the Brooklyn cases video had been lost because they were all at least a decade old, making it impossible to verify Franco’s Kings County arrests.
Tina Luongo, the Legal Aid Society’s attorney-in-charge, called for “similar audits on cases involving NYPD officers with documented histories of misconduct.”