Queens judge says top prosecutor lied to convict in death penalty case
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Wrongfully convicted Queens native George Bell hugs his mother following his release from prison Friday. Photo by Klaus Enrique
By David Brand
The head judge in Queens criminal court says a top prosecutor knowingly buried evidence in order to convict three men for their bogus roles in a 1996 cop killing and then lied about the “egregious” violations that nearly sent one of them to death row.
Queens Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas overturned the wrongful convictions of George Bell, Rohan Bolt and Gary Johnson on Friday after their lawyers and Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz filed a joint motion seeking reversal. The three men were sentenced to virtual life in prison after juries found them guilty of killing NYPD officer Charles Davis and check cashing store owner Ira Epstein during a botched robbery on Dec. 21, 1996.
After years of advocacy, their reversals hinged on recently uncovered police reports, a prosecutor’s handwritten notes and witness statements that were hidden from defense lawyers by Queens prosecutor Charles Testagrossa, the former head of the Major Crimes Division. Witnesses and informants had implicated members of the so-called “Speedstick” gang for the crime, which mirrored other armed robberies the same crew had committed.
Testagrossa, now at the Nassau County DA’s Office, told CNN that he was not “aware” of that exculpatory evidence — despite using the very same reports to pursue other prosecutions at the time. He also claimed in court that there was no possible connection between Speedstick and the cop killers.
On Monday, Zayas amended his initial ruling to call Testagrossa’s excuse “mindboggling” and to say he thought Testagrossa was lying.
“Even if that sort of memory lapse had occurred — and the Court does not believe that it did — good faith would have required much more than making sweeping assertions about the absence of any connection between [the Speedstick robberies] and this crime, without first making a diligent effort to ensure that nothing in the District Attorney’s Office’s files related to the Speedstick investigation contradicted that position,” Zayas said. “And all that that effort would have entailed was reviewing files of cases handled by Testagrossa’s own bureau.”
“This was, in short, not a good-faith misstatement; it was a deliberate falsehood,” Zayas added.
Zayas also took the Queens DA’s Office to task for claiming Testagrossa, ADA Brad Leventhal — the current head of the office’s Homicide Bureau — and other prosecutors acted in “good faith” despite not providing any proof of that.
“The People’s assertion of good faith is also puzzling because no affirmations from any of the assistant district attorneys involved in this prosecution have been submitted to the Court, so there is no explanation for why this information was not disclosed, let alone an explanation that would support the conclusion that the nondisclosure was fairly attributable to negligence, inadvertence, or anything else short of deliberate suppression,” he said.
Zayas previously said that Testagrossa, Leventhal and Queens ADAs “deliberately” buried the evidence pointing to other suspects so as not to interfere with their prosecution, even as they sought the death penalty against Bell.
All three men walked free from Greenhaven Correctional Facility Friday following Zayas’ ruling.
Nevertheless, Queens DA Melinda Katz said she needs 90 days to determine whether she will retry them for the murders, in spite of the significant evidence pointing to the Speedstick members.
Bell’s trial attorney Mitch Dinnerstein called on Katz to drop the charges and said the only thing Bell, Bolt and Johnson had in common with the actual suspects was the color of their skin — all were Black.
“She should stand up in a courtroom and say these three men were actually innocent of what they were convicted of,” Dinnerstein said. “They deserve that.”
He said the prosecutors simply refused to consider evidence that would have jeopardized their case heading to trial.
“Think how shocking it is what they did here: they had information that these three guys didn’t do it, but it would have been embarrassing to walk away from this case,” Dinnerstein said. “So they went ahead and they sought the death penalty against George and they knew damn well that they had info that these Speedstick guys did the crime.”
The prosecutors never turned over to defense counsel a police report based on an interview with a Speedstick member who said his counterparts committed the murders. They also suppressed plea deals that they made with key witnesses and hid contradictory witness accounts.
The key police report only emerged when another wrongful conviction attorney, Tom Hoffman, received an unredacted version while working on another bogus case and shared it with lawyers for Bell, Bolt and Johnson.
“It’s a crazy idea to let the guys out and investigate and see if they’re guilty,” Dinnerstein said. “If you let them out you have to believe there’s not just problems with the convictions, but also the problem that you arrested and convicted the wrong people.”
Katz, Leventhal and Testagrossa did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
