JAIL FOR NOTHING
Suit hits hopeful for 9 yrs. in wrongful-slay rap
A BROOKLYN MAN is suing the city and a former prosecutor — who is running for district attorney — for withholding evidence in a murder case that sent him to prison for nearly a decade.
Wayne Martin spent nine years behind bars for the murders of Donald Turner Sr. and Ricardo Davids inside Gary’s Tire Emporium in East Flatbush on Nov. 27, 2005.
Martin, 36, was exonerated on Sept. 7 last year.
His defense attorneys charged that former Assistant District Attorney Marc Fliedner did not turn over a police report that could have helped Martin’s case.
That document, known as the scratch sheet, had an “irregularity” that removed another suspect’s name.
While the late DA Ken Thompson was battling with colorectal cancer, he released a statement agreeing to dismiss Martin’s case.
“I have concluded that a lack of reliable evidence, compounded by the utter failure to disclose exculpatory evidence at the original trial, would make it impossible to retry this case,” Thompson said.
The key evidence against Martin was a wool hat found at the crime scene. That hat was never photographed by crime scene detectives.
“There was no probable cause to arrest or prosecute Mr. Martin ... given the fact that the only hat implicating Mr. Martin was taken from another location and ‘planted’ at the scene of the crime,” according to Martin’s lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn Federal Court on Thursday.
Fliedner, who is among six candidates for district attorney, vehemently denies any wrongdoing.
One of Fliedner’s platforms for the top prosecutorial seat is preventing wrongful convictions. “Although I agree with Mr. Fliedner that there needs to be reform in the conviction review process, I don’t think such reform should be led by someone whose prosecutorial experience includes actively convicting an innocent man,” said Martin’s attorney Craig Phemister. The suit names the city, Fliedner, Detectives Kevin Glasser, Mike Hopkins, Officer Walter Connoly and other officers and seeks an unspecified amount of damages for malicious prosecution and suppression of favorable evidence. “The defendant officers intentionally falsified evidence and coerced witnesses, vitiating probable cause against Mr. Martin, including but not limited to the fact that no other suspect was ever identified,” the lawsuit reads. Martin claims his wrongful arrest was just the tip of the iceberg.
“... Fliedner continued this falsification during his investigation when he learned of the false evidence and then proceeded with the prosecution of Mr. Martin, despite glaring exculpatory evidence in Mr. Martin’s favor,” the suit charges.
Fliedner referred questions to the city’s law department .
“We will review the complaint,” a spokesman for the law department said.
By late Friday, Fliedner revealed he plans to file a lawsuit of his own — against Acting District Attorney Eric Gonzalez for defamation.
“There was a forum at St. Francis College ... where Eric Gonzalez slipped and said ‘You withheld evidence’ and that’s something that he knows to be false and unprovable ... and that’s slander,” Fliedner said.
He says he will sue Gonzalez as a private citizen.
“I’m not suing him as a DA, I’m suing him as a candidate who used it for political purposes to diminish my position.”