Nearly 50 convictions dismissed after former detective found guilty of perjury
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The Queens district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit moved to dismiss 46 cases in which an NYPD detective later found guilty of perjury served as the main witness.Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
Nearly 50 people who had previously been found guilty of various misdemeanor charges in Queens had their records cleared this week after the shoddy work of one NYPD detective called the integrity of the cases into question.
In all, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz’s Conviction Integrity Unit on Thursday asked a judge to vacate and dismiss 46 criminal cases that involved the work of former NYPD Detective James Donovan, who was convicted of perjury last year when he lied about the details of a case he worked several years prior.
Following Donovan’s perjury conviction, the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which Katz launched the first year she took office as district attorney in 2020, began reviewing other cases Donovan worked on in Queens.
Donovan had acted as the “essential witness” in the 46 convictions that were dismissed on Thursday. Because of the former detective’s central role in the cases, the DA’s office told Acting Queens Supreme Court Justice Joanne Watters that the defendents’ constitutional rights to a fair trial had been unknowingly violated – none of the defendants were formally found to be innocent.
“We cannot stand behind a conviction where the essential witness was a law enforcement officer convicted of a crime that irreparably impaired his credibility,” Katz said in a statement. “After an unflinching review proactively conducted by my Conviction Integrity Unit, I believe it is necessary to take this step to protect the public’s confidence in the justice system.”
In 2020, Donovan was working as a detective in the 103rd Precinct’s warrant squad when he helped make a gun arrest.
A year later, he told a Queens grand jury that the arrest began when he spotted the suspect asleep in a car. Donovan told the grand jury that he had recognized the man, and that he was wanted in a different crime, prompting the arrest.
In Donovan’s tale to the grand jury, the detective pulled the man out of the car, handcuffed him and later found a gun sitting in the backseat of the car where the suspect’s head was resting.
But Donovan’s recounting of the arrest was a lie.
When he later spoke with a prosecutor who was preparing the case for a hearing, Dononvan said that not only did he himself not make the arrest, he also didn’t see the gun.
A different detective made the arrest and found the weapon, though Donovan was nearby. It’s unclear why Donovan lied about his level of involvement in the arrest.
However, because Donovan had lied to the grand jury, the gun charges against the suspect were dropped.
Though Donovan does not have an extensive history of misconduct, 14 allegations of wrongdoing while on the job have been made against him. Only one was substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates allegations of police misconduct.
In addition to the CCRB complaints, Donovan was named in two lawsuits alleging police misconduct. Combined, the two suits resulted in $975,000 in settlements paid for with taxpayer dollars.
After Donovan was charged and found guilty of perjury in 2023, the Queens DA’s office began to investigate a number of past cases the detective worked on in the World’s Borough.
After identifying the 46 cases, the DA’s office reached out to the Legal Aid Society, which worked to identify and contact the defendants, and to serve as the defense attorneys on the joint motion submitted to Watters on Thursday.
“We applaud District Attorney Melinda Katz for taking further action to vacate convictions involving a discredited detective who was convicted of perjury after he testified falsely in the grand jury in a separate case,” said Elizabeth Felber, the supervising attorney of the Wrongful Conviction Unit at The Legal Aid Society. “While we hope that this moment delivers some justice and closure to the New Yorkers impacted by these tactics, the sad reality is that many were forced to suffer incarceration, hefty legal fees, loss of employment, housing instability, severed access to critical benefits and other collateral consequences resulting from criminal convictions.
“The Legal Aid Society urges DA Katz and other local prosecutors to continue to conduct these reviews on a rolling basis with full transparency,” Felber added. “The same lens used on our clients charged with criminal conduct must be applied to those in law enforcement. Anything less will erode the public’s trust in the criminal legal system to hold those accountable for egregious acts of misconduct.”
The 46 vacated convictions bring the total number of vacated convictions by the CIU to 148, a vast majority of which have been attributed to unreliable statements made by police officers.
In all, 132 convictions in Queens have been tossed because of questionable police work done by a handful of officers.
The remaining 16 vacated convictions came after a CIU investigation turned up new evidence, a flaw in the original trial or various other reasons that called into question the original conviction.
On several occasions, judges hearing motions to vacate convictions in Queens have suggested that misconduct by current and former prosecutors in the DA’s office led to wrongful convictions, including some that resulted in decades of prison time for innocent New Yorkers.
The CIU has yet to formally identify any prosecutorial wrongdoing in their investigations.
