It’s his mission to right wrongs
Att’y helps spring wrongly jailed men
Growing up in Brooklyn, we called it “doing the right thing.”
Phil Smallman watched client Tony Yarbough sob tears of freedom in a Kings County Supreme Court conference room Thursday after serving 21 years in prison for a 1992 triple homicide he didn’t commit.
“I’m thrilled for him,” Smallman said. “This is why I became a lawyer. This is one of those incredible days in an attorney’s life when you get to right a wrong. In law school, you dream that you will experience that thrill once in a lifetime. For me, it’s come twice. So I feel pretty damned blessed.”
I knew Phil Smallman growing up in the old-school Park Slope, Brooklyn, of the 1970s when we were cramming for college, chasing girls, drinking cold ones at Farrell’s tavern and spinning dreams about kids and careers. We stayed in occasional touch over the years as I went into newspapers and Smallman worked as a prosecutor in Queens and Brooklyn, putting away 718 area-code bad guys when crack and guns ruled the streets.
I was a liberal, but I touted Smallman when he ran for judgeships on the Republican and Conservative lines, races he lost. We might have different politics, but we both believed in the fair and square justice that was the unwritten code of the Brooklyn streets that formed us.
“When justice involves taking away someone’s freedom, we’re supposed to do the right thing,” he says. “You gotta believe you’re right so you can look yourself in the mirror when you shave and put your head on the pillow at night.”
Smallman finally hung his shingle on Court St. as a successful, street-smart criminal and civil lawyer who knew all the important players in the system.
In 1997, Smallman phoned me to say he had “caught a case where a helluva good Golden Gloves fighter named Gerald Harris out of St. Albans, Queens, is doing heavy time for a crime his brother admitted to in open court.” Smallman told me that Bob Jackson, a legendary trainer out of Gleason’s Gym, refused to throw in the towel to free his boxer.
I interviewed all the players involved and came away convinced an innocent kid was doing time for his brother’s armed robbery.
After reading Harris’ story in this space, William Hellerstein, a Brooklyn College law professor, joined Smallman’s defense team.
Two weeks before Christmas in 2000, after serving nine years of an 18-year sentence, Harris’ verdict was vacated and he e walked out of Queen Supreme Court a free man.
“I owe my freedom dom to my trainer Bob Jack- ackson and to Phil hil Smallman, who o never gave up fighting for me,” Harris said.
“This is a once- - in-a-lifetime mo- oment,” Smallman an told me back then. He was wrong. A few months ago, Smallman called to say he and co-counsel Zach Margulis-Ohuma were trying y to spring “a client named Tony Yarbough Yarb who is 100% innocent but who’s done 21 years for a triple homicide, i including his mother and his 12-year-o 12-year-old sister. The DNA under his mom mom’s nails in 1992 matched the DNA fo found in a woman murdered in 199 1999 while my guy was in prison.”
I read the defense lawyers’ br brief to vacate the verdict, inte terviewed Yarbough and people from the Coney Island projects where the murders h happened, and a family memb ber of the third victim, another 12-year-old girl. Sources in th the Brooklyn District Attorne ney’s office hinted the case sm smelled pretty bad.
I wrote that Tony Yarbough was another victim of that triple homicide.
On Thursday, newly elected Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson’s office distinguished itself when prosecutor Mark Hale told Judge Raymond Guzman, “This verdict must be vacated.” And so it was. In the courtroom was Smallman’s sprightly mother, Elizabeth, witnessing her son’s law school tuition being spent the best way imaginable as Yarbough walked out a free man.
“Helluva good feeling having Mom see me on the side of the angels,” Smallman said, laughing. “If a day like this happens once in a lawyer’s lifetime you’re lucky. Twice, you feel blessed. Basically, today everyone just did the right thing.”
Then Smallman rushed to another courtroom on a different case in Brooklyn.