32 YRS. ON BAD RAP
Qns. man freed in murder feels ‘great,’ says fix ‘broken’ system
Before iPhones and Instagram and TikTok or Twitter, Carlton Roman was an innocent man sent to jail on a lie.
There, he languished for 32 years, through birthdays and holidays and basically his daughter’s whole life, until the right prosecutors came along and concluded the man convicted in Queens of a cold-blooded murder, while the twin towers were still standing and another governor named Cuomo was in office, didn’t do the crime.
“When this case went to trial three decades ago, the Queens DA’s office presented evidence used against Mr. Roman as it understood it to be,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said in court Monday. “Unfortunately, that evidence did not provide the full story as we know it today.”
The full story would present the true killer in Roman’s place, and give real closure to the family of Lloyd Witter, who was fatally shot in a Jamaica, Queens, home in 1989.
But absent that, Katz said, comes the acknowledgment that exonerating the innocent is just as important as making sure the guilty face the appropriate consequences.
As for Roman, whose smile was as wide as Queens Blvd., where his legal odyssey ended in Queens Criminal Court, he knows he’ll never get back the three decades he lost to the criminal justice system.
But he said he is committed to looking ahead rather than back on the time he could only describe as hell.
“I feel fantastic, I feel,” Roman, 59, told reporters as the air of freedom filled his elated lungs. “Absolutely fabulous. … Anybody here can imagine what it feels like to be literally in hell, and this is my first 10 minutes out. I’m at a loss for words. I’m not technically like a shy person, I have nothing prepared to say to you all. But let me say one thing: The justice system, everybody knows, is broken.
“I’ve read a thousand reports that say that. But words alone aren’t going to get that fixed. You all have a part to play in this also. But I’m here now. But there’s a lot of people in there who need your attention now. There’s people in there who have been fighting for justice for longer than I have.”
Roman’s freedom fight started after he was arrested and charged with Witter’s murder and for the attempted murder of Jomo Kenyatta, who survived the shooting, but has since had to use a wheelchair.
A third man in the house, Paul Anderson, was found bound with telephone wire and handcuffed.
The two survivors fingered Roman — a friend of the murdered man — as a ringleader and shooter, according to the DA’s office.
But there was no hard evidence linking Roman — a recent college graduate who had no criminal record — to the killing. He was charged based on the eyewitnesses, despite the fact his girlfriend confirmed his alibi.
At trial, Roman was convicted and sentenced to more than 43 years in prison for the murder of Witter and the attempted murder of Kenyatta.
Roman submitted his case to be reinvestigated by the Queens DA’s office in 2013 and 2018, but prosecutors made no moves to dismiss the charges. In April 2020, however, Katz, the new district attorney, opened an investigation into the case.
The case review found that Anderson recanted his story in 2019, saying that he falsely accused Roman of the killing.
Anderson said Roman was not among the shooters and that he didn’t even see him on the day of the crime, March 16, 1989.
The Queens DA’s office also found that Anderson, starting during the initial investigation up to the present, has given six different versions of the events of the shooting and “most are inconsistent with each other and the facts of the crime.”
A new witness interviewed by the DA’s office says Anderson and Kenyatta were involved in drug trafficking and that Kenyatta was a violent druglord.
Despite that, Kenyatta testified at trial he did not have a substantial criminal history, prosecutors said.
“This was a seriously flawed case,” said Roman’s lawyer James Henning. “There were many aspects to it that cry out, in that sense. It just took somebody taking a serious look at it to recognize those things and to have the integrity to stand up and say that this is not the norm.”
The Queens DA’s conviction integrity unit has overturned eight convictions since Katz became district attorey.
Roman’s daughter Nadine was just 9 months old when Roman took the fall for somebody else.
“I’m looking forward to shopping together, watching a movie together, sharing a meal,” she said. “It feels surreal.”
Roman’s mother, Arel Claudette Phillips, 75, struggled to find the right words.
“I can’t even explain,” she said. “So good. So good. After all these years, my God.” Roman said he has some catching up to do. “I’m gonna go with my family now,” Roman said before climbing on a black bus with his relatives. “There are people here from Jamaica that I haven’t even met yet.”
Roman shared words of encouragement for those who have suffered his fate.
“Stand strong,’ he said, “and never give up.”