Wrongfully convicted Queens man gets largest settlement in city history

George Bell, a man from Queens who spent more than half his life in prison for a crime he did not commit, is now the recipient of the largest settlement payout for a wrongful conviction in New York City history. 

By Ryan Schwach

George Bell, a man from Queens who spent more than half his life in prison for a crime he did not commit, is now the recipient of the largest settlement payout for a wrongful conviction in New York City history. 

In 1999, Bell and two other men were convicted in the 1996 killings of an off-duty police officer and the owner of a check-cashing business in East Elmhurst, and Bell was sentenced to life without chance of parole. Bell, then 19 years old, would spend the next two decades in prison before a court decided in 2021 that prosecutors and police buried important evidence in his case and that his confession was coerced by the cops. 

This week, Bell was awarded a settlement of $17.5 million from New York City, a record breaking sum, first reported by the New York Times.  

“The fact that it's the largest amount ever paid to any individual for wrongful conviction recognizes how horrifying and horrible and unfair and unjust his case is,” said Richard Emery, Bell’s attorney. “It does certainly allow him to go forward with his life. He's 46, so he has a good life ahead of him, taking care of his family and trying to repair the irreparable damage that all those years inflicted upon him.” 

Emery told the Eagle over the phone on Friday that Bell has chosen not to speak publicly or to reporters about the settlement, saying he wants to move on. 

However Emery haid that Bell was “very happy” with the settlement ruling, despite what he had been put through that led to it. 

“It was a pretty miserable existence, and yet he rose above it as an incredibly wonderful and elegant human being,” said Emery. 

In 2021, then Queens Criminal Court Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas, who now serves as the state’s chief administrative judge, overturned Bell’s conviction, as well as those given to Rohan Bolt and Gary Johnson.

Zayas, who ruled on the case after Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz’s Conviction Integrity Unit introduced a motion to do so, apologized to the men on behalf of the court. 

But Zayas went further than the investigation conducted by the DA’s CIU and scolded the prosecutors who argued to put Bell, Bolt and Johnson behind bars. 

“I do believe it is important that I say how sorry the court is for the miscarriage of justice and the egregious violations of your constitutional rights that occurred in this courthouse, my courthouse, 20 years ago,”  Zayas said. 

“The stakes could not have been higher and the duty of care by the prosecution should have been correspondingly heightened,” Zayas added. “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.”

Bell, Bolt and Johnson’s wrongful conviction came at a time when there was public pressure on police to find the perpetrators of the 1996 double murder, and pressure in the Queens district attorney’s office to convict. In recent years, a number of accusations of prosecutorial misconduct against the office during that period have been made.

Defense attorneys for the three men and investigations from the CIU found several issues with the prosecution of the case, which resulted in virtual life sentences for the three innocent men, and in Bell’s case, nearly the death penalty.

Their arrests and prosecutions were based on precarious eyewitness accounts, coerced confessions where Bell was beaten by police and exculpatory evidence not brought to light by the office of then-DA Richard Brown.

“There was systemic abuse in the Queens DA's office under Brown,” Emery said. “It was a policy of that office to get convictions, even when they weren't supported by the evidence, and that is insidious and malicious. That resulted in the over incarceration of course of Black men and many, many, many innocent people going to prison.”

The prosecutor of the case Brad Leventhal and his boss, Assistant District Attorney Charles Testagrossa, withheld evidence that would have pointed to other potential suspects, and hid mental health records of key witnesses, according to Zayas.

Documents uncovered later on found that the NYPD had connected members of “Speedstick,” a local gang, to the botched robbery that led to the double homicide, but prosecutors hid that evidence despite later using it to prosecute Speedstick members in another case. 

Brad Leventhal (left) was one of several prosecutors who worked to convict George Bell, who received a record wrongful conviction settlement from the city last week. Leventhal resigned from the DA’s office shortly after Bell’s conviction was overturned in 2021. Eagle file photo by Paul Frangipane

In the hours and days following the 1996 killings, the NYPD made posters and sent out descriptions of the perpetrators, none of which fit Bell, Bolt or Johnson. 

In 2021, Zayas called the conduct “egregious,” particularly given the fact that the DA's office pushed for the death penalty. 

Leventhal, who at the time of the case’s reversal was head of the DA’s Homicide Bureau, resigned from his post, and Testagrossa resigned from the Nassau DA’s office. Neither cited the Bell, Bolt and Johnson case as their reason for leaving.  

During the hearing in 2021, Katz denied prosecutors from the DA’s office deliberately hid any evidence, but agreed to vacate the convictions regardless. 

Katz’s office did not respond to the Eagle’s requests for comment on the $17.5 million reward for Bell. 

Despite the difference in opinion about the prosecutors’ culpability in the case, Emery says he has nothing but respect for Katz’s CIU. 

“They are doing very good work, and they have integrity,” he said. 

Emery filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of Bell nearly a year after the overturned conviction in June 2022, asking for $50 million in restitution, which even then he said would not be enough to make up for what Bell had gone through. 

Emery, a Columbia Law School graduate who spent two years as chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, said the issues in Bell’s case are indicative of wider-reaching problems that still persist in today’s criminal justice system. 

“The big issues are eyewitness identification and false confessions,” he said. 

Flimsy and fabricated eyewitness accounts were one of the pieces of evidence that put Bell in prison, which Emery sees as a major issue. 

“If you think about it, probably 20 to 30 percent of the people in prison today are there on pure eyewitness identification, without any corroboration of any sort,” he said. “You're talking about probably 10, 15, 20 percent that are erroneous, so, you're talking about at least 10,000 to 15,000 people in prison, who are there based on erroneous eyewitness identifications. That is a huge problem, and I see that as certainly the next frontier.” 

Coerced and false confessions also led to the conviction for Bell, who said he was assaulted by officers who fed him information about the murder. It als led to several other high profile cases such as the incident involving the Central Park Five, later called the Exonerated Five. 

“Nobody understands that everybody thinks that nobody would confess to a crime they didn't commit,” said Emery. “That's just nonsense. It just happens all the time because people are scared…and they don't know their rights.” 

Emery suggests that all interrogations should be recorded, in order to limit the possibility of misconduct by police. 

George Bell was wrongfully convicted alongside two other men, Rohan Bolt and Gary Johnson, but was released in 2021. Eagle file photo by Rachel Vick

Emery also sees large payoffs like this one as another possible deterrent towards misconduct, especially when taxpayers are picking up the tab. 

“Nobody wants the taxpayers shelling out enormous amounts of money for a system that's run amok,” he said. “It's a huge incentive to fix this.” 

A spokesman for the City Law Department told the Eagle that “the settlement was in the best interest of the parties.” 

As for Bell, Emery said that although he deserves the record payment, it doesn’t come close to repairing the damage. 

“George is someone who did not deserve to have what happened to him happen to him, and he certainly deserves this and more for his future and his happiness” he said. “He is a wonderful, loving, caring, elegant human being who stood up for himself in a way that was so heroic that it's almost unimaginable.”