Man framed by N.Y. sleuth to get $6.4M
NEW YORK — A man who was framed by a rogue detective and served 23 years in prison for a murder he did not commit will receive $6.4 million from New York City in a settlement that came before a civil rights lawsuit was even filed, lawyers involved in the case have said.
A $150 million claim filed last year by David Ranta was settled by the city comptroller’s office without ever involving the city’s Legal Department — which the lawyers involved in the negotiations described as a “groundbreaking” decision that acknowledged the overwhelming evidence the city faced. The comptroller’s quick acceptance of liability in the high-profile conviction is also significant because the case is the first of what is expected to be a series of wrongful conviction claims by men who were sent to prison based on the flawed investigative work of the detective, Louis Scarcella, who has been accused of inventing confessions, coercing witnesses and recycling informers.
“While no amount of money could ever compensate David for the 23 years that were taken away from him, this settlement allows him the stability to continue to put his life back together,” Ranta’s lawyer, Pierre Sussman, said. “We are now focusing our efforts on pursuing an unjust conviction claim with the state of New York.”
Ranta, who declined to talk Thursday, was convicted of the 1990 killing in Brooklyn of a Hasidic rabbi, Chaskel Werzberger, a Holocaust survivor who had stepped into his car at dawn just as a jewelry robbery was taking place across the street. He was shot in the head and his station wagon was used as a getaway car while the jeweler escaped unharmed.
The rabbi’s death shook the Orthodox Jewish community in the Williamsburg section, which was a major voting bloc for the newly elected district attorney at the time, Charles Hynes.
Hynes’ office defended the conviction for decades, fighting off appeals and rejecting evidence that pointed to another killer. But when one eyewitness came forward decades later to say that a detective had told him to pick the man with “the big nose” out of a lineup — Ranta was the only person who fit that description — the district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit conducted a yearlong investigation and discovered more serious problems.
When investigators approached two other witnesses in the case, they immediately admitted that they had lied.