Man who spent teen years in Rikers continues fight against murder charges
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Prakash Churaman was charged with murder when he was 15 years old. After the conviction was overturned, he has begun the process all over again. Photo courtesy of Churaman
By Jacob Kaye
A 22-year-old man will walk into Queens Criminal Court Wednesday to continue to fight murder charges he was arrested for as a 15-year-old boy and which he has long-claimed he didn’t commit.
Prakash Churaman, who was charged in the 2014 Jamaica murder of 21-year-old Taquane Clark, had his conviction overturned and now faces a second trial after he declined to take a plea deal from Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz last year.
On Wednesday, Churaman and his attorney Jose Nieves will appear in front of Queens County Supreme Court, Criminal Term Judge Kenneth Holder as prosecutors submit their response to the defendant’s motion to reopen his evidentiary hearing.
“I feel anxious, nervous – I’m just experiencing a variety of emotions and feelings,” Churaman, who has been out on bail and confined to his home since January, told the Eagle. “At that courthouse I just get a lot of flashbacks about what I experienced.”
Churaman was first arrested by the NYPD in December 2014, and he’s been shuffled around the criminal justice system ever since, growing up behind bars.
Prosecutors say Churaman was one of the gunmen in a robbery gone wrong when Churaman, alongside two others, allegedly broke into his friend’s home and ended up fatally shooting Clark and injuring one other.
An elderly woman who lived in the home during the robbery later told police that she recognized Churaman’s voice and identified him as one of the suspects. Her testimony, which is at the crux of the prosecution’s case, has been called into question by Churaman’s attorney.
“We’re seeking to reopen the hearing because there were significant inconsistencies in the witness' testimony that were not available to the defense at the initial hearing a few years back,” Nieves said. “The elderly woman that identified his voice had testified before that she had met him twice before, then she testified that she had met him a few other times before. But it's never been consistent as to how she knows my client.”
Police arrested Churaman at 6 a.m. on Dec. 9, 2014 without an arrest warrant and drove him around for a few hours before bringing him to the 113th Precinct, he said. He maintained his innocence when Detective Barry Brown began to interrogate him, but he later gave a confession, which Churaman says was coerced.
Brown also led the interrogation of Chanel Lewis, the man charged in the 2014 killing of Karina Vetrano in Howard Beach. Lewis later said that he too was coerced into confessing to the crime. At one point, the two defendants were on trial in adjacent courtrooms in Queens Criminal Court.
Elijah Gough, who was 28 at the time of the robbery, was convicted and sentenced to 65 years to life in prison. Gough was accidentally shot during the robbery and during the police’s interrogation, they poked Gough’s gunshot wound to get him to admit that Churaman was involved, Churaman said.
Churaman’s mother, who cannot read or write in English, was eventually called to the precinct, and was misled by police as to what would happen should her son speak to them, according to Churaman.
“She was equally, if not greater, psychologically coerced,” Churaman said.
Churaman waited for his trial on Rikers Island for nearly three years before he was eventually convicted by a jury in 2018 and sentenced to 9 years to life in prison. No DNA evidence was found linking Churaman to the scene.
Represented at the time by civil rights and criminal defense lawyer Ron Kuby, Churaman had his case heard before the Appellate Division, Second Department. The court overturned the conviction, on the grounds that the defense wasn’t granted permission to call a key witness to testify about false confessions.
A few weeks after his conviction was overturned, Churaman was offered a plea deal by prosecutors. Maintaining his innocence, Churaman denied the deal.
The DA’s office did not respond to request for comment for this story.
“No guilty person would decline a deal like that,” Churaman said. “Because I'd be a free man in the next two months if I had taken that plea deal.”
Kuby, who was working on the case pro-bono, dropped Churaman as a client and the case was assigned to Nieves, who believes Churaman is innocent.
“I believe that, if given a fair trial, we can exonerate Mr. Churaman,” Nieves said. “That's what I'm fighting for – to make sure he gets a fair trial. He’s been waiting for a fair trial for many, many years now.”
