DA ‘greed for conviction’
Ex-school custodian, jailed 10 yrs., settles suit vs. city for $6M
A former school custodian who spent 10 years in prison because Queens prosecutors allegedly withheld key evidence and manipulated witnesses has settled his lawsuit against the city for $6.25 million, the Daily News has learned.
The settlement ends a 16-year ordeal for Julio Negron, now 54, who saw his life collapse after he was arrested for a February 2005 shooting in Queens that erupted from a traffic altercation.
“This case cost me a lot,” Negron told The News on Tuesday. “This will stick with me for the rest of my life. It’s something I’m going through all the time.”
Four witnesses to the shooting said Negron was not responsible. The victim himself initially did not conclusively name Negron, but detectives and the lead prosecutor in the case, Patrick O’Connor, took the victim into a room and “pressured” him into identifying him, said Negron’s lawyer Joel Rudin.
O’Connor withheld from the grand jury the existence of that chat with the victim and the fact that the other witnesses did not identify Negron, court papers allege. O’Connor also withheld evidence that indicated another person — a man caught nearby with a cache of illegal guns — may have been responsible.
Negron was convicted and sent to prison, where he used the Freedom of Information Law to gather case records for an appeal. “It was all based on new evidence Julio came up with that the Court of Appeals agreed to review the case,” Rudin said.
In 2015, the court overturned the conviction, concluding that O’Connor “actively misled the trial court” and withheld evidence about that other potential suspect.
After Negron’s release in 2015, the DA’s office opted to retry him. But the trial judge, Greg Lasak, dismissed the case. Lasak concluded O’Connor’s “deception” was “indisputably deliberate,” and that more evidence in the case led away from Negron than toward him.
While Negron (photo) has struggled in life, O’Connor has become the chief of the gun violence suppression unit in the Brooklyn DA’s office, where he made $166,686 last year, records show. “It’s sad that he can be rewarded for doing the things that he did,” Negron said. “He’s not being held accountable. The greed for conviction was beyond what you can imagine.”
In May, a group of law professors filed a grievance against O’Connor with a state lawyer disciplinary committee over his handling of the Negron case and seven others, alleging he had a record of “repeatedly, blatant and egregious” misconduct. That complaint is pending.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn DA’s office said, “Since joining the Brooklyn DA’s office in 2014, ADA O’Connor has done a great job getting justice for victims of violent crime. We await the grievance committee’s findings and recommendations regarding his handling of the Queens matter.”
A spokesman for the city Law Department said the settlement was in the city’s best interests.
The case is the fourth major settlement involving the Queens DA’s office for prosecutorial misconduct that took place under the regime of former longtime DA Richard Brown, who died in office in May 2019. The total settlement amount in those cases comes to at least $11 million.
“The theme of these lawsuits has been that prosecutors commit this kind of misconduct because they don’t perceive personal consequences,” Rudin said. “They perceive their offices are much more concerned with winning than how the case is won.”
The current Queens DA, Melinda Katz, “has been steadfast in her commitment to ensuring that prosecutors in her office abide by the highest ethical standards,” said a statement from her office.
Katz has set up a “rigorous” system for handling and preventing prosecutorial errors, the statement said.