Wrongfully convicted Queens man sues city for $50 mil
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From left, Rohan Bolt, George Bell and Gary Johnson walk free from prison after their wrongful convictions were overturned on March 5, 2021. Bell is seeking $50 million from eight NYPD officers and the City of New York in damages caused by the wrongful conviction. File photo by Klaus Enrique
By Jacob Kaye
Almost one year to the day after a Queens judge officially set him free of his wrongful murder conviction, George Bell is suing eight police officers and the City of New York for $50 million, a recently filed civil suit says.
Bell, and his attorney Richard Emery, filed the suit in federal court this month, calling for $50 million to be paid to Bell, who is one of three Black men from Queens who collectively spent nearly three quarters of a century in prison for a murder none of them had any involvement with.
Bell, alongside Gary Johnson and Rohan Bolt, were found to be wrongfully convicted for a 1996 double murder in March 2021, after the Queens district attorney’s Wrongful Conviction Unit found that exonerating evidence had been withheld by NYPD officers in the case. Former Queens Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas, who now serves in the Appellate Division, Second Department and who heard the wrongful conviction case, additionally blamed prosecutors for knowingly burying the evidence in order to convict the three men.
In July 2021, Queens Supreme Court Justice Michelle Johnson officially exonerated Bell, Bolt and Johnson after the Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz’s office declined to bring the murder charges against the men for a second time.
But the exoneration came after Bell, who was arrested at 19 years old, had already spent more than half his life in prison and had already allegedly been beaten by police officers in an effort to get him to falsely confess to the murder of NYPD officer Charles Davis and check cashing store owner Ira Epstein during a botched robbery on Dec. 21, 1996.
At one point during his conviction, prosecutors sought the death penalty against him.
“[Bell] suffered enormously throughout his prison years,” Emery told the Eagle. “He's a remarkable guy, but he has lost the lion's share of his life, certainly more than half of it.”
“We're asking for a big sum of money from the city for having railroaded him in ways that were outrageous because people at the time either knew, or clearly should have known, that he was innocent,” the attorney added.
Davis and Epstein’s murders garnered widespread attention in the days and weeks immediately following the robbery. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani launched a citywide manhunt for the perpetrators and told police to solve the murder before Christmas – he allegedly later called Bell a “cop killing cry baby,” following his arrest.
Bell, Bolt and Johnson were arrested on Christmas morning.
They were convicted on multiple pieces of flimsy police work, including the testimony of an alleged eyewitness who was facing legal issues of his own and who was allegedly upset that Bell was in a relationship with a former partner of his.
The lawsuit also claims that Bell was beaten by police officers in an effort to get him to confess, which he did, eventually – one officer, Louis Pia, allegedly told Bell that he would “put him in a f–king hospital.”
The DA’s Wrongful Conviction Unit initially denied that the assistant district attorneys prosecuting the case, Brad Leventhal and Charles Testagrossa, had acted improperly at any point during the case.
However, during the June hearing, the office announced that on top of the initial findings overturning the conviction in March – Leventhal and Testagrossa withheld evidence from the defense and violated the men’s constitutional right to a fair trial. The DA’s team discovered further undisclosed evidence that they say would have impacted the original verdict.
In March, Zayas berated the former prosecutors for their handling of the case.
“The stakes could not have been higher and the duty of care by the prosecution should have been correspondingly heightened,” Zayas said in March. “The opposite occurred in this case … the District Attorney’s office deliberately withheld from the defense credible information about third-party guilt that is evidence that others may have committed these crimes.”
Leventhal quit his job as the Queens DA’s homicide bureau chief less than a month after Zayas’ admonishment.
Leventhal’s resignation came a few weeks after Testagrossa, who was serving in the Nassau County district attorney’s office, resigned.
“It was a perfect storm of horrible events and of malicious behavior on the part of cops and prosecutors in this case,” Emery said. “And we're going to hold them accountable.”
“It can never be enough to compensate [Bell],” he added. “But that’s the system we have.”
A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department told the Eagle, “We’ll review the case.”
