JAILED 24 YRS., CASE TOSSED, ON TRIAL AGAIN
Notorious cops may be key to sending 45-year-old back to prison in 1995 B’klyn murder; ‘they just don’t want to let it go,’ he says
The fate of an accused Brooklyn killer, as it did 27 years ago, involves the NYPD’s most notorious detective.
Investigator Louis Scarcella sat with Eliseo DeLeon inside the 79th Precinct stationhouse on June 29, 1995, where the suspect supposedly confessed to a murder committed weeks earlier. DeLeon, found guilty at trial, spent the next 24 years behind bars until a judge citing the sketchy tactics of Scarcella and partner Stephen Chmil tossed the conviction in 2019.
Now the Brooklyn district attorney, despite a second appeals court decision in DeLeon’s favor last year, is retrying the defendant for the crime dating to the Giuliani administration.
And DeLeon could share a courtroom later this month with the once-venerated cops who put him behind bars. His attorney intends to call both ex-detectives as hostile witnesses.
“They just don’t want to let it go,” DeLeon told the Daily News as his retrial began last week. “Because it’s bad, this Scarcella thing. ... I mean, I don’t have no more to give them. I gave them 24 years, and I can’t give them no more.”
In the 1990s, as city homicides climbed above 2,000 a year, the hard-charging Scarcella and Chmil closed case after case as Gotham’s real-life Batman and Robin. But they return now with tattered reputations after 15 of their convictions were overturned across the past nine years, even as Scarcella repeatedly insisted the pair did nothing wrong.
DeLeon was just 18 when arrested on June 29, 1995, three months after his last birthday as a free man until after his Nov. 11, 2019, release. Now age 45, he has spent more than half his life behind bars.
Chmil, Scarcella and a third detective signed a card stating the arrested DeLeon was read his Miranda rights, with the teen suspect passing on the chance to have an attorney present before confessing, an NYPD document indicates.
“Defendant states on June 4, 1995, he was opposite 164 Franklin Ave. for the sole purpose of robbing a male Hispanic,” his alleged confession declared. “I pointed the gun at the victim and he grabbed the gun. The gun accidentally went off. It was just an accident.”
Neither detective testified at the trial where DeLeon was convicted and given a sentence of 25 years to life. But an Appellate Court decision supporting the 2019 ruling noted Scarcella and Chmil “played a significant role in
the defendant’s arrest and the attendant police investigation.”
A spokesman for the Brooklyn district atttorney said the office cannot comment on the ongoing prosecution.
According to cops, victim Fausto Cordero was killed during a robbery gone wrong as his wife watched on a summer night. His teary widow, Bianca Cordero, returned to court Friday to identify DeLeon as the killer from the witness stand.
Defense attorney Cary London, in his opening statement, laid out his case against the two detectives.
“Scarcella and Chmil didn’t care if they had the right suspect,” he said. “They only cared that they had a suspect. That is the type of police officers they were.”
The legal reversals came with a tab of more than $50 million in payouts by the city and state to wrongly convicted suspects, with the most recent judicial rebuke coming just last month.
The double-homicide conviction of a Brooklyn drug kingpin dubbed “Baby Sam” was tossed after a witness said he lied on the stand at the urging of Scarcella.
DeLeon recalls every detail of the day he was arrested 27 years ago, right down to his probation officer’s advice to get a haircut.
“It’s like it happened yesterday,” he said. “It was Scarcella downstairs by the elevator. They let me go see my probation officer. Then I come down in the elevator, walk out of the building and they handcuffed me right there.”
After DeLeon’s supposed confession, he appropriately sat alongside a ticking clock for a videotaped interview with prosecutors. As an assistant DA attorney explains his right to an attorney, DeLeon answers quickly.
“That’s what I wish, I need a lawyer,” the teen declares. “I’m not going to just go and be a fool, put myself on tape and say I did something I didn’t do . ... I’m not stupid. I’m trying to be smart about this. That’s what I want to do.”
DeLeon recalled that even the prosecutor assigned to his case liked his odds for acquittal.
“I mean, the ADA literally told us himself,” recalled DeLeon. “He’s like, ‘I never seen a case in which I’m gonna lose so bad.’ ”
He also remembered hearing from another Brooklyn prosecutor back in 2012 that his case was under investigation for wrongful prosecution, but nothing ever came of it — and he did another seven years behind bars.
DeLeon freely admits that he was a far different person at the time of his arrest.
“The truth was I wasn’t an angel,” he acknowledged. “I was running around in the streets. I used to sell drugs. But at that time, when I was 18 ... I was moving away from all the bad things.”
Despite his ongoing legal situation, DeLeon keeps an eye on the future. He’s hoping to receive his college degree next month and pursue a law career.
Unlike many suspects linked to Scarcella, DeLeon says he holds no animosity toward the retired detective or his partner.
“None whatsoever,” he said. “I truly believe, when you think about karma, it happens. Whatever it was, big or small, it’ll come back to him and he’ll regret it. Him? His partner? I don’t think about them much.”