Appellate court reverses Queens teen’s 2018 murder conviction
/
Attorneys Ron Kuby and Rhiya Trivedi consult with Prakash Churaman, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2018. Eagle file photo by Christina Carrega
By David Brand
A state appellate court has reversed the 2018 murder conviction of a 21-year-old Jamaica man who spent his teenage years on Rikers Island, ruling that a Queens judge should have allowed an expert witness to testify about coerced confessions during the man’s jury trial.
Prakash Churaman was sentenced to nine years to life in prison after a Queens jury found him guilty of second-degree murder in the Dec. 5, 2014 shooting death of a woman named Taquane Clarke inside her Jamaica home. Churaman, who was 15 at the time of the murder, was also convicted of shooting and wounding another occupant, Jonathan Legister, during the botched home invasion.
A third person in the house, 78-year-old Olive Legister, told detectives she recognized Churaman’s voice and identified him as one of three masked perpetrators responsible for the killing. She said Churaman placed a gun against her head even as he told her he would not kill her.
Churaman was arrested four days after the murder and interrogated by detectives at a Queens stationhouse. For two hours and 45 minutes, he maintained his innocence before eventually confessing to having a role in the break-in and shooting.
Churaman later recanted the confession, though prosecutors from the Queens District Attorney’s Office said he failed to offer a compelling alibi.
At his 2018 trial, Churaman’s attorneys Rhiya Tivedi and Ron Kuby said Churaman was “spoon-fed” information about the home invasion by Detective Barry Brown in order to elicit a videotaped confession.
Trivedi and Kuby attempted to call an expert on false and coerced confessions to testify during the trial, but Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder blocked the expert from taking the stand. The jury convicted Churaman of murder, attempted murder, burglary and other charges.
Four appellate justices from the Second Department Appellate Division said Holder should have allowed the expert to testify in order to educate jurors about the psychology behind false confessions.
A case report completed by the expert “was relevant to this particular defendant, including discussing characteristics that heightened his vulnerability to manipulation, and the interrogation conducted by the detectives, such as the techniques that were utilized and the improper participation of the defendant’s mother during the interview,” the judges determined.
Churaman’s case returns to Queens Supreme Court, nearly six years after he was first locked up.
Trivedi said she hoped to resume plea negotiations to allow Churaman to leave prison.
“In our view, he deserves to be out as soon as possible since he’s been incarcerated since he was 15 years old. What does it do to your mind to be incarcerated when you’re 15, to miss out on your entire adolescence?” she said. “The factors that mitigate his culpability were many while recognizing the Legister family’s grief.”
The Queens DA’s Office did not respond to an email seeking comment on how they will proceed.
