TIME TO CLEAR OUR NAMES

Jailed for decades in slay & headed to court with newly found evidence

Childhood pals Eric Smokes and David Warren hope that on Wednesday they will hear a judge vacate their convictions in a 1987 Times Square murder they have long said they did not commit.

Smokes (above l.) and Warren (above r.) were teens when they were arrested for the fatal mugging of 71-year-old French tourist Jean Casse, who was attacked on W. 52nd St. on Jan. 1, 1987, minutes after the New Year’s Eve ball drop. They maintained their innocence from the start, but were both convicted of murder.

“I just went into shock,” Warren recalled when the Daily News interviewed him in 2017. “I might have been in shock for two years, honestly.”

In 2005, Smokes got a letter in prison from the prosecution’s key witness — a 16-year-old — who said that in an effort to get a break in his own case, an unrelated mugging, he told a detective he had done robberies with Smokes and Warren, and that Smokes told him he’d “caught a body” in Times Square.

The letter was all Smokes needed to hear.

“There was only one way to go,” Smokes told The News in 2017. “Getting out and just letting it go, sucking it up — ‘25 years is just 25 years’ — that wasn’t an option for me.”

Warren and Smokes ended up serving their time in the murder. Warren was released from prison in 2009, Smokes in 2011.

They have fought ever since to clear their names. Their lawyers argued that the case was built on testimony from witnesses manipulated and threatened with arrest by NYPD detectives and prosecutors for the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Their first attempt to clear their names failed, with Judge Stephen Antignani ruling against them in 2020.

But after their lawyers said they would appeal, the postconviction justice unit formed by current DA Alvin Bragg took another look at the case.

In October, postconviction justice unit head Teri Rosenblatt, in a letter to the judge, indicated that the DA’s office is “prepared to concede … that there is newly discovered evidence that creates a reasonable probability of a more favorable outcome.”

The evidence includes photos that had been misplaced; leads that pointed to other suspects and had not been turned over to defense lawyers as required, and statements from two witnesses. Also, court papers say, notes described as misplaced suggest another witness was directed to pick out Warren’s name and photo from a set of possible suspects.

A spokesman for the DA’s office would not comment on Wednesday’s hearing — or how Antignani might rule on his latest review of the case.

But James Henning, a lawyer for Smokes, now 56, and Warren, now 53, said he expects the judge will vacate the convictions.

Henning said police botched the investigation from the start. Cops failed to check a police hotline tip from a man who said he was a lookout for the robbery — in which he thought no one would get hurt — and that the killer was smoking crack at a particular Bronx address and had the victim’s wallet.

Henning also said law enforcement officials could have cleared Smokes and Warren during the DA’s review that led to the 2017 court hearing had they “not perjured themselves to defend this conviction.”

“It’s this longstanding practice,” Henning lamented. “They say, ‘We can’t be wrong’ and ‘It’s impossible we got this wrong.’ ”

Smokes and Warren had gone to Times Square that night to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

Hours before the fatal encounter, Smokes, then 19, and Warren, then 16, buddies from East New York, Brooklyn, took the subway to Times Square.

A few minutes after the ball dropped, Casse — who was visiting the city with his wife and others — was mugged and robbed outside Ben Benson’s steakhouse on W. 52nd St. as he headed back to his room at The Plaza hotel.

Casse was punched and fell to the ground, striking his head. He died later that day. His wife was not hurt.

Smokes and Warren said they were outside the Latin Quarter nightclub, four blocks away from where Casse was attacked, and that they headed south when they realized they didn’t have enough money to get into the hotspot.

They were arrested Jan. 8, 1987.