'WRONG MAN' IN JAIL FOR 20 YRS.
DA ignores slay evidence: att'y.
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office has been sitting on mounting evidence that a man sent to prison for murder in 1996 is actually innocent, The Post has learned.
Christian Pacheco was 18 years old when he was accused of slicing the throat of a man he believed had been hitting on his girlfriend at a Brooklyn bar. Within two years he’d been convicted and sent to prison for 25 years.
But over the last 20 years, evidence has emerged to suggest that he didn’t do the deed, attorney Lance Lazzaro said.
“I believe that the wrong person was convicted,” Lazzaro told The Post. “It’s gotten to the point where I can’t leave this kid in jail another day.”
Four witnesses so far have come forward to say that Pacheco was not involved in the murder of Lemuel “Lenny” Cruz, who was killed in a 1995 brawl at the Con Sabor Latino Lounge in Sunset Park.
As a result of the revelations, the Brooklyn DA’s office said it is now reviewing the case.
“It is a process that takes time and it is a process that we know works,” said a spokeswoman for the office.
Witnesses at the time — and to this day — agree that the brawl started when Pacheco got angry at a man who was dancing with a girl he liked. The man bumped Pacheco on the dance floor.
Pacheco’s Latin Kings brothers, seeking revenge, wrongly targeted Cruz as the interloper and an angry mob beat and fatally stabbed Cruz.
At trial, a witness fingered Pacheco, now 40, as the one who slit Cruz’s throat with a “razor boxcutter.”
But witnesses now say Pacheco was incapacitated at the time of the murder.
Billy Gerena, an FBI cooperator, told the feds that he felled Pacheco — by accident — before the crowd even made it outside.
FBI reports say Gerena swung his knife wildly when someone who turned out to be Pacheco bumped him outside the club, leaving Pacheco “on the ground.”
Demaris Rivera, the girl Pacheco liked, also remembers Pacheco lying on the ground and away from the fighting. “He was pretty far from that whole incident,” Rivera, a postal worker and nursing student, told The Post.
DNA evidence suggests also that Pacheco was not involved, Lazzaro said, adding that his client had none of the dead man’s DNA on his clothes. DNA evidence found on Pacheco’s boots could have come from the crime scene, the lawyer said.
Adding to the mystery, Melvin Garcia pleaded guilty in federal court to slitting Cruz’s throat and laid out the crime in a 2013 letter to the Brooklyn DA’s office.
“I shredded Lemuel Cruz to ribbons! Christian Pacheco is completely innocent of this crime,” Garcia wrote to the DA.
It’sI gotten tot the point where I can’t leave this kid in jail another er day. . — Attorney Lance Lazzaro