JUSTICE AWAITS
A verdict is imminent in the first retrial of a suspect whose conviction was tossed thanks to allegedly shoddy police work of former Brooklyn NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella.
“This defendant is still guilty,” prosecutor Chow Yun Xie recently told the judge at the bench retrial of accused killer Eliseo DeLeon in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
DeLeon spent 24 years in prison before his murder conviction was overturned in 2019 amid concerns about his disputed confession allegedly secured by Scarcella.
Judge Dena Douglas is expected to issue a verdict in the case by the end of the month — the first decision in a retrial involving a tossed conviction and Scarcella, according to The Associated Press.
DeLeon was 18 in 1995 when he was charged with shooting Fausto Cordero in Clinton Hill during an attempted robbery as the victim was returning home from a religious confirmation.
DeLeon maintained his innocence and accused Scarcella and the detective’s former partner of trumping up a confession.
A tarnished badge
Now retired, Scarcella was once an NYPD star known for helping win convictions in the midst of a homicide epidemic in the 1990s.
The ex-cop, who has defended his use of aggressive tactics amid the wave of citywide violence, said he doesn’t even recall being involved in DeLeon’s case.
But concerns over his methods have mounted in recent years, forcing the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and its Corruption Review Unit (CRU) to junk roughly 20 cases he worked on.
While the office has determined that many of Scarcella’s cases were tainted, prosecutors have chosen to retry two of them so far, including DeLeon’s.
Scarcella’s partner, now-retired Officer Stephen Chmil, has copped to using “questionable tactics” in DeLeon’s interrogation, but denied they were illegal.
Scarcella once defended his approach to policing on the “Dr. Phil” TV show after retiring.
“The bad guys don’t play by the rules when they kill Ma and Pop,” he said. “I don’t play by the rules, but I play within the moral rules and the rules of the arrest in Brooklyn.”
In DeLeon’s case, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez explained prosecutors’ fight to convict the defendant once again.
“In every case involving [Scarcella], CRU exhaustively reviewed all evidence, and the decision as to whether to vacate or uphold the conviction is based on the facts of the individual case, mindful of past findings regarding Scarcella’s conduct,” the DA said in a statement to the AP.
Citing concerns over Scarcella’s investigation of the case, Gonzalez last month dropped the murder convictions of three men who were accused of fatally setting a Bedford-Stuyvesant subway clerk on fire in his booth in 1995.