Ex-con can’t get verdict thrown out

A Brooklyn man who spent 33 years in prison for a deadly crack house robbery that he insists he didn’t commit lost his bid Tuesday to have the conviction tossed — because he admitted his guilt to the state Parole Board.

The Daily News exclusively reported on the many questions surrounding John Ramsey’s conviction for the 1981 murder of Vernon Green in Flatbush. Ramsey said he told the Board he was guilty because he believed he could only prove his innocence by getting out of prison.

He got parole, but his statements to the board became part of his undoing — along with witness testimony at trial, his own recantation and the fact that his accomplice announced their names before the stickup and implicated him afterward.

“Especially compelling is at all seven of his Parole Board appearances, the defendant admitted, under oath in sworn testimony, in varying detail, his guilt,” Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Donald Leo wrote.

Those admissions, along with other evidence, outweighed serious questions regarding authorities’ handling of the case, as well as a key witness who in 2018 renounced his previous testimony, the judge wrote.

That witness said he’d been feuding with Ramsey over a girl at the time of the killing and that Ramsey hadn’t actually pulled the trigger, as the witness previously testified. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office declined to recommend vacating the conviction after a review. A spokesman said the DA’s office agreed with the decision.

Ramsey said he felt “terrible” that his statements of guilt to the Parole Board weighed heavily in the decision.

“All I want to do is get out. When I get out, I’ll fight,” he said, explaining his logic.

But the legal defeat was nothing compared with more than three decades behind bars.

“I’m in a better position than I was in prison!” he said. “Surviving under those circumstances was much tougher than this.”

He said an appeal “was definitely going down.”