A man spoke strong words outside the Bronx Hall of Justice as he was exonerated 28 years after “one of the worst” wrongful convictions in history.
Antonio Mallet, 54, spent 28 years behind bars after New York City police officers arrested him in connection with a 1996 murder and robbery.
Mallet maintained his innocence and was ultimately exonerated by Judge Alvin Yearwood on Thursday.
he said lohud.com outside the courtroom: ‘I’m definitely going to get myself held accountable. I won’t stop here, you understand?
Mallet was accompanied by his lawyers, including David Shanies, who promised that the fight was not over and that they would continue to seek answers as to how such a tragic failure of justice could have occurred.
Antonio Mallet, 54, spent 28 years behind bars after New York City police officers arrested him in connection with a 1996 murder and robbery.
Mallet maintained his innocence and was ultimately exonerated by Judge Alvin Yearwood on Thursday.
Mallet was accompanied by his lawyers, including David Shanies (left), who promised that the fight was not over and that they would continue to get answers about how this could have happened.
The saga began in 1996, when Michael Ledeatte was shot to death in the Bronx after the sale of a stolen car went wrong.
His acquaintance Gregory Walker was about 140 feet from the Lex GS 300 Ledeatte was driving when he saw two people approach the car and shoot Ledeatte.
After police arrived at the scene, they proceeded to question Walker for more than 19 hours, leading to the identification of Mallet as the shooter, according to legal documents recently prepared by the legal team handling the wrongful conviction case. Mallet.
This identification was the primary evidence that led to Mallet’s guilty conviction in 1999, causing even the original judge to scratch his head over his credibility even though he refused to throw out the verdict.
Other questionable instances in this case were found in Walker’s written statement during his interrogation.
Walker wrote that Mallet shot Ledeatte twice in the head, but that the man had only been shot once, which was because an emergency room doctor allegedly gave police incorrect information after mistaking a wound. entrance and exit with two separate bullet holes.
Although Walker was present at the crime, this poor recollection of details suggests that police may have trained Walker to accept this as fact, according to Mallet’s attorneys.
This began in 1996, when Michael Ledeatte was shot and killed in the Bronx after the sale of a stolen car went wrong. His acquaintance Gregory Walker was about 140 feet from the Lex GS 300 Ledeatte was driving when he saw two people approach the car and shoot Ledeatte.
After police arrived at the scene, they proceeded to question Walker for more than 19 hours, leading to the identification of Mallet as the shooter, legal documents recently prepared by the legal team handling Mallet’s wrongful conviction case. .
Mallet was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, but continued to seek justice.
Until Mallet’s release on parole in 2019, his team filed about a dozen different legal challenges, but all were rejected.
The now Bronx District Attorney, Darcel Clark, was one of the judges who dismissed his petition.
Her spokesperson, Patrice O’Shaughnessy, told lohud.com that the evidence presented in Westchester County never reached Clark’s desk when she was overseeing his case.
Yearwood was the catalyst for Mallet’s conviction being overturned after the judge heard his most recent petition and assigned the case to the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office.
A legal report from the Westchester Conviction Review Unit noted that after Walker gave five statements and experienced hours of questioning in which police threatened that the lack of an identifiable suspect could lead “police to conclude that he was the murderer,” he identified Mallet.
Until Mallet’s release on parole in 2019, his team filed about a dozen different legal challenges, but all were rejected. The now Bronx District Attorney, Darcel Clark (center), was one of the judges who dismissed his petition.
Yearwood (center) was the catalyst for Mallet’s conviction being overturned after the judge heard her most recent petition and assigned her to the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office.
Mallet said: ‘T“They need to be held accountable and I’m sure other people will come forward and say they did this to them too.”
Joseph Nieves was the lead detective on this case. He acknowledges that the pressure on Walker during the interrogation “with the threat of becoming a suspect” is what led the man to implicate Mallet.
There have also been other cases of misconduct by Nieves.
The Conviction Review Unit obtained Nieves’ disciplinary record. One incident described the detective hijacking a business owner’s video store to sell counterfeit videos.
He was arrested after the NYPD investigated and deemed the complaint “partially substantiated,” according to Mallet’s lawyers.
These incidents of misconduct were not turned over to Mallet’s lawyers at the 1999 trial.
Renowned civil rights attorney Ron Kuby called this conviction one of the worst he had seen and described the detectives as “dirty cops” at the time of Mallet’s arrest.
