HOW RAPE CHARGES VANISHED AT RIKERS
DA blames complicated new evidence rules
Bronx prosecutors have dropped all charges against a Rikers Island doctor’s assistant accused of raping women inmates after failing to comply with new laws on the handling of evidence, the Daily News has learned.
Physician’s assistant Sidney Wilson, 64, of Brooklyn, skated on a 43-count indictment filed in 2017 because Bronx District Attorney Darcell Clark’s office could not bring the case to trial quickly enough.
Wilson was accused of trading Popeye’s chicken, candy and cigarettes for illegal sex with inmates, who legally cannot consent.
Clark had touted the case in a press release and in testimony as part of her crackdown on sexual abuse in the troubled jail. Wilson was indicted on 43 counts of rape, sexual abuse and other related sex crimes committed against four women while they were being held at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers between October 2013 and December 2014, according to prosecutors.
“The defendant allegedly used his position of trust to sexually abuse female inmates who came to him seeking medical attention,” she said. “We will prosecute any staff member who commits crimes against inmates in our push to stem corruption and fear in our jails.”
But in June 2021, Clark’s office quietly dropped all charges against Wilson and is now blaming the discovery reform law requiring prosecutors to disclose a wide range of evidence earlier in the trial process. If the evidence is not turned over within the required time period, the case can be thrown out.
Employees in Clark’s office admitted that they couldn’t meet that standard.
“In some instances, cases filed prior to Jan. 1, 2020, when the discovery reform was implemented, could not be brought into compliance with these requirements despite the prior disclosure of hundreds or even thousands of pages of discovery materials,” said a spokeswoman for the Bronx DA.
To the victims in the case, that reason does not pass the smell test.
“My clients were ready to appear,” Philip Hines, who represents the women inmates in a federal lawsuit against Wilson, the city and Corizon Health, a subcontractor that employed Wilson. “My clients are frustrated. They are never going to have their day in court to see justice against their perpetrator.”
He declined to make the women available for comment.
Wilson’s lawyer said the
evidence against his client was weak.
“It’s a nice, politically correct statement to write but it doesn’t explain Sidney’s case,” Cesar Gonzalez Jr. said in response to the Bronx DA’s explanation for dropping the case. “The crux of the discovery material was provided to me.”
“What prevented them from being ready from 2018 up to the new discovery reform in 2020? They certainly had over a year to bring this matter forward,” he said.
Gonzalez told The News he believed the Bronx DA was using discovery reform to mask the fact that the case was falling apart.
Some of the victims were “problematic” and at least one got rearrested on separate charges while the case was open, he said.
At one point, prosecutors asked if Wilson would be willing to plead guilty to just a violation, Gonzalez said.
City lawyers defending against a civil case brought by Wilson’s accusers also questioned the credibility of the allegations.
In a motion to dismiss the suit, a lawyer for the city argued that the women partially participated in the illegal conduct with Wilson by accepting contraband he brought into the jail.
The Bronx DA did not say what exactly they failed to turn over or why it took a year and a half after the reform went into effect for the case to be dismissed.
Discovery reform has transformed criminal prosecution in the city more than bail reform, which gets more attention.
In Manhattan, discovery reform accounts for charges being dropped in 1,721 cases as of November 2021, a 90% increase from 2019. There were 21 Supreme Court felony cases dropped last year because the speedy trial clock ran out before all the evidence could be turned over.
The new requirement forces assistant district attorneys to pore over hours of video footage and reams of paperwork to ensure criminal defendants have all the information they need to enter a plea or fight their charges.
In 2020, then-Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. asked the City Council for $700,000 more in funding just to pay for warehouse space to store the extra paperwork. The Legal Aid Society, which backed the reform, believes it promotes fairness in the criminal justice system. They say the reform has not impacted prosecutions.
“These dismissals have nothing to do with discovery or any other criminal legal system reforms that have been recently implemented statewide,” said Tina Luongo, attorney-in-charge of criminal defense at Legal Aid.
Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former top prosecutor in DA Vance’s office, said that discovery reform has transformed her old job.
“The job is not fun anymore,” she said. “The job has gone from feeling like you are doing the right thing, feeling like you are helping people, feeling like you are fighting crime and spending time with witnesses — to being a glorified paralegal.”