Speaker 1: Hi, Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well
Speaker 1: as the number one true crime podcast My Friend The
Speaker 1: Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden,
Speaker 1: I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's
Speaker 1: a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's
Speaker 1: the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood,
Speaker 1: which reached number one on the charts when it debuted
Speaker 1: half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders
Speaker 1: abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to share this story of a man who fought the
Speaker 1: law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide
Speaker 1: prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela
Speaker 1: of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh,
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Hey listeners, I'm Steve Fishman
Speaker 1: and I'm Dax's Devlin Ross. Welcome to another fantastic bonus episode.
Speaker 2: Of the Burden.
Speaker 1: Before we start, remember that subscribers get more exclusive and
Speaker 1: add free bonus content.
Speaker 2: It's easy to subscribe. Just go to the show page
Speaker 2: and Apple Podcasts. Say you know Dax Er Steve for
Speaker 2: the special exclusive price of two ninety.
Speaker 1: Nine a month Dax. You can sell me anything. Today's
Speaker 1: bonus is a little bit different than the ones we
Speaker 1: usually do. Today we want to make a case. We
Speaker 1: want to make a case for an investigation. And first
Speaker 1: we're going to make our case to you and our listeners.
Speaker 1: We hope by the end you'll agree something needs to
Speaker 1: be done. By the way, if you have any thoughts
Speaker 1: on this, or maybe you have some information, call us
Speaker 1: one eight three three eight Burden.
Speaker 2: So let's start with what we know. Luis Scarcela is
Speaker 2: now regarded as a disgrace detective, the most notorious ex
Speaker 2: detective in New York. Twenty one cases Louis helped investigate
Speaker 2: have been overturned.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to focus on the assistant District Attorneys,
Speaker 1: the eightas in the Brooklyn District Attorney's office. These are
Speaker 1: the lawyers who prosecuted those twenty one wrongful convictions. They
Speaker 1: had the power, the authority, the law degrees, but when
Speaker 1: it comes to wrongful convictions, they have often skated away free.
Speaker 1: For one thing. By law, the DA has immunity. This
Speaker 1: means someone who's been wrongfully convicted cannot sue the DA,
Speaker 1: he can sue the cops and Louis cases have cost
Speaker 1: the taxpayer over one hundred million dollars. But remember, every
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction had an ADA presiding over it. The current
Speaker 1: DA's conviction review it has overturned lots of Scarcella's cases,
Speaker 1: and we need to give current DA Eric Gonzalez credit.
Speaker 1: He has made writing wrongful convictions a cause. Still even today,
Speaker 1: the reports overturning Scarcella cases often blame him by name.
Speaker 1: His flawed work explained in detail. But the prosecutors, the
Speaker 1: adas who supposedly vetted his investigations, endorsed his testimony, tried
Speaker 1: the cases, put witnesses on the stand, told the jury
Speaker 1: what to believe. They get anonymity for the most part,
Speaker 1: like you know, it's a professional courtesy.
Speaker 2: And yet one of Scarcella's eightya's had three convictions overturned
Speaker 2: another four. Any consequences to their career, Steve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they rose in the ranks, all right, but let's
Speaker 1: not get ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 2: To lead the research, we tapped to distinguish Brooklyn based
Speaker 2: journalist named Ted ham.
Speaker 1: So, Ted, can you introduce yourself?
Speaker 3: Sure? My name is Theodore Ham. I prefer to go
Speaker 3: by Ted and I I am the chair of journalism
Speaker 3: at Saint Joseph's University in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, and I've
Speaker 3: written extensively about Scarcella cases for The Independent India with
Speaker 3: a Y.
Speaker 1: Ted's nickname is the Hammer, so it comes from Ham,
Speaker 1: your Land's name exactly, but it's adopted because.
Speaker 3: Everything looks like a nail.
Speaker 1: So, Ted, how'd you first get interested in Scarseller?
Speaker 3: I first wrote about him in twenty seventeen for The
Speaker 3: Daily Beast, and then I've since followed his cases and
Speaker 3: on a few occasions over the last several years, I've
Speaker 3: been the only reporter in the courtroom covering some of
Speaker 3: the cases. I'm the only one there. I know that
Speaker 3: it's not a case they want to call attention to.
Speaker 1: So fair to say that you are the Scarcella reporter
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to dispute that.
Speaker 1: You're the guy who's been at it longest, been at
Speaker 1: it well the most.
Speaker 3: Over the last six or seven years. Yeah, I would
Speaker 3: say so.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Scarcella called me, he said, who's
Speaker 1: this guy, Ted Ham who's stalking me? I would say
Speaker 1: that from Scarcella's point of view, no love lost he
Speaker 1: sees ted Ham the Hammer as an antagonist.
Speaker 2: Which makes today's episode interesting because I'd say that the
Speaker 2: Hammer's investigation supports some of Scarcella's basic contentions. Remember, Scarcella
Speaker 2: loves to point out that he didn't act alone. His
Speaker 2: cases had to sign off of the DA's office.
Speaker 3: So Steve approached me in January and raise this question,
Speaker 3: which is you would think at some point the ada's
Speaker 3: who handle these cases, somebody would say, okay, well, we're
Speaker 3: reviewing Scarcelli's cases, but maybe the fact that they handled
Speaker 3: Scarcella's cases would lead them to examine these eightas cases.
Speaker 1: Right, you did the math, you did the research. You
Speaker 1: came up with twenty one convictions of Scarcella related cases
Speaker 1: that have been overturned, huge number. We know that that's
Speaker 1: resulted in more than one hundred million dollars being dolled
Speaker 1: out of tax payer money and settlements.
Speaker 3: And over four hundred years of wrongful incarceration.
Speaker 1: So how do you go about finding out if an
Speaker 1: Ada has had other convictions deemed wrongful?
Speaker 3: Well, the people who are familiar with the cases obviously
Speaker 3: are the defendant who typically has done extensive amount of
Speaker 3: research while they were in prison. On their case. And
Speaker 3: then there's their appellate lawyers, who often know other cases
Speaker 3: from their research and knowing other lawyers working on these
Speaker 3: cases and so on, and then there's always the newspapers.
Speaker 3: The prosecutors' names do turn up occasionally, but the DA's
Speaker 3: office never wants to disclose the name of the prosecutor,
Speaker 3: so they issue long reports. Even when they explain that
Speaker 3: the prosecutors has committed misconduct, they end up saying that
Speaker 3: misconduct was nothing compared to what Scarcela did. And you know,
Speaker 3: they're happy to blame the cop. They're happy to name
Speaker 3: the cops scarcel and others, but almost always they do
Speaker 3: not name the prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Protecting their own or what.
Speaker 3: The view is that they don't want to hurt morale,
Speaker 3: they don't want to scare off other prosecutors from coming
Speaker 3: to the office. They're going to be thrown under the
Speaker 3: bus or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2: So just to be clear, you wrongfully convicted guys, send
Speaker 2: them to jail for decades, and then the DA's office
Speaker 2: is worried about your morale.
Speaker 1: Ted as I look at your research, here's one thing
Speaker 1: that jumps out at me. Twenty one scar Seller cases
Speaker 1: have been overturned. Of the ada's who helped prosecute those cases,
Speaker 1: nine of them have had another fourteen convictions overturned that
Speaker 1: were not scar Seller cases. And that's just what you
Speaker 1: know by getting on the phone with people, right ted.
Speaker 1: It's not exhaustive.
Speaker 3: Now, you would need to have the personnel files, I
Speaker 3: guess of the DA's office, and they're never going to
Speaker 3: turn those over.
Speaker 1: So when you go through these twenty one cases, what's
Speaker 1: jumping out at you in terms of the involvement of
Speaker 1: the assistant district attorneys.
Speaker 3: Scarcella himself, not to defend him, but just to explain
Speaker 3: what his position is is that he could not make
Speaker 3: any arrest and neither could any Brooklyn detective without approval
Speaker 3: of the die's office.
Speaker 2: Here's Louis in his own words.
Speaker 4: I brought every case the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, Esa Gomez,
Speaker 4: all the witnesses, they were vetted, and they all went
Speaker 4: along with my arrest They all went along with my arrests,
Speaker 4: and they convicted them.
Speaker 1: So fair to say, I guess that when Scarceli says
Speaker 1: that it was the job of the district attorney to
Speaker 1: vet and evaluate the cases, that's accurate.
Speaker 3: Right, But that doesn't excuse any misconduct on his part
Speaker 3: for just rounding someone up and bringing them in and
Speaker 3: figuring out how they can charge that person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't see how a prosecutor could say,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I was hoodwinked by this detective.
Speaker 3: I agree. That seems to be what their position is, that, oh,
Speaker 3: he fooled us. Well, that's shame on you, right, because
Speaker 3: how many times can they say that when they went
Speaker 3: forward with a bad case. Dozens upon dozens of times,
Speaker 3: not just Scarcela.
Speaker 1: Let's get to this token boothcase. This is a colossal
Speaker 1: headline grabbing, awful murder. There's a guy who's a token
Speaker 1: booth clerk.
Speaker 3: Harry Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Harry Kaufman. Somebody goes up to that little slot in
Speaker 1: the front of the token booth, sprays in a flammable liquid.
Speaker 1: What is it lighter fluid?
Speaker 3: I think something to that effect.
Speaker 1: Es and then lights a match and creates an explosion
Speaker 1: inside the booth. This guy, Harry Kaufman, who's the token
Speaker 1: booth clerk, hangs on. He's got burns all over his body.
Speaker 1: He hangs on for two weeks and finally dies in
Speaker 1: the burnyard. This is a case of such incredible sadism
Speaker 1: that it just grabs the attention, grabs the headlines. There
Speaker 1: is an absolute drum beat to find the person guilty,
Speaker 1: person or persons.
Speaker 3: Bob Dole, who was the front runner for the nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six Republican nomination, used this as an example of
Speaker 3: urban insanity, crime out of control.
Speaker 1: And so Louis Scarcella steps into this case, as he
Speaker 1: does with a number of high profile cases, and there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of pressure.
Speaker 3: Scarcella and a handful of other detectives involved, because there
Speaker 3: were many. They got confessions from all three of the suspects.
Speaker 2: Louis told us how he got one of the confessions,
Speaker 2: and it's pure Louis as bad.
Speaker 1: Louie's wife had a terrible kitchen accident and had burns
Speaker 1: up and down her body. She too, had been in
Speaker 1: the burn unit.
Speaker 5: I started talking to him about mister Kaufman was in
Speaker 5: the burn unit. Told him my wife was in the
Speaker 5: burn unit, told them how she suffered, told him how
Speaker 5: mister Kaufman suffered.
Speaker 1: I hit a core. I hit a core.
Speaker 5: Said I'll tell you if I can visit my girlfriend.
Speaker 5: We had conjugal visits and anybody tell you knows a liar. Okay,
Speaker 5: we even had them in the Brooklyn d A's office.
Speaker 5: I was able to get the confession.
Speaker 3: And they indicted and prosecuted and sent three guys away
Speaker 3: for seventy five years. And they turned out that they
Speaker 3: were all wrong. Right, none of the evidence that they
Speaker 3: were using against the three of them held up. One
Speaker 3: witness was consorting with her partner in a car crime
Speaker 3: happened after midnight, and so they were having sex in
Speaker 3: the car, and then she claims that she saw two
Speaker 3: of the three right.
Speaker 1: But initially this witness had said it was someone else,
Speaker 1: and then she changed her story, so her credibility wasn't questioned.
Speaker 3: And then I went. One defendant called nine one one
Speaker 3: to report the token booth blaze, and then after the
Speaker 3: investigations proceeding, they bring him to the precinct and by
Speaker 3: the time he leaves the precinct, he's confessed to the crime.
Speaker 3: What motive would you have to call nine one one
Speaker 3: to report a blaze that he had, in fact had started.
Speaker 3: That's just ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You're saying that the assistant district attorneys in this case
Speaker 1: mishandled it.
Speaker 3: Right, Scarsella did not prosecute these three guys, right.
Speaker 1: That's right. Three eighty's prosecuted it.
Speaker 3: It was their obligation to wage Scarcella's and the other detectives'
Speaker 3: confessions versus other evidence that they had in the case
Speaker 3: and to say, well, this may or may not add up.
Speaker 2: So what did the report by the conviction of you say?
Speaker 3: And the reports by the cru that came out almost
Speaker 3: three decades later, they raised serious questions about the trial
Speaker 3: summation before the jury, saying that they were saying things
Speaker 3: that were stretching the evidence. And so there is some
Speaker 3: acknowledgment in those reports that there was wrongdoing by the prosecutors.
Speaker 1: The reports point out the bad conduct, but almost always
Speaker 1: failed to use the names of the prosecutors. When you
Speaker 1: say that prosecutors went beyond the evidence in their summations,
Speaker 1: are we basically saying that they lied to the jury.
Speaker 3: They were distorting the abne right, So I mean, whether
Speaker 3: you want to call that lies or not.
Speaker 6: And what happened to those three eighty as one judge
Speaker 6: another moved to a white shoe law firm in Manhattan,
Speaker 6: and then the third, who presided over at least one
Speaker 6: other wrongful conviction. One other that we could.
Speaker 1: Find is a current member of the Brooklyn District Attorney's
Speaker 1: executive team. I wanted to get to two of the
Speaker 1: cases that we focused on in the series. I know
Speaker 1: you've done some research on Anne Gutman. Anne Gutman was
Speaker 1: the prosecutor in the Derek Hamilton case that was eventually overturned.
Speaker 2: We dig into this case in episode nine of The Burden.
Speaker 2: Remember that's where we took the trip to the North
Speaker 2: Carolina Woods, chatted with the witness who had first told
Speaker 2: us she was someone else before revealing herself to us.
Speaker 1: This case against Derek, whatever you believe about his innocence
Speaker 1: or guilt, the evidence was not there to convict. And
Speaker 1: we really show that the ballistics evidence and the forensic
Speaker 1: evidence contradicts the report of the main witness. What does
Speaker 1: Anne Gutman do to overcome that small problem. She essentially
Speaker 1: lies to the jury. She says, it's not black, it's white.
Speaker 1: The forensics supports, the ballistics supports our version of the story,
Speaker 1: when in fact it just the opposite. So what happens
Speaker 1: is the conviction Review Unit looks at that closely. They
Speaker 1: excoriated her.
Speaker 2: We got someone to review the report for us. It
Speaker 2: says she quote fell far short of the prosecutor's obligation
Speaker 2: to do justice in quote and that she quote significificantly
Speaker 2: misled the jury end quote.
Speaker 1: Just like in the Token Booth case. Right, So, just
Speaker 1: to keep a tally, so far, we have two different
Speaker 1: cases in which prosecutors misled the jury. By the way,
Speaker 1: in the report available to the public, the criticism of
Speaker 1: Anne Gutman was left out. Apparently the district attorney didn't
Speaker 1: want to throw one of their own under the bus.
Speaker 1: But we know that the full report takes her to task,
Speaker 1: not scarsell It. It takes the assistant district attorney to
Speaker 1: task for not only mishandling the case, but really for,
Speaker 1: in a larger sense, failing to do justice. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting to me, Ted is that now that you've looked
Speaker 1: at Anne Gutman, you've been able to find that this
Speaker 1: is not an isolated incident.
Speaker 3: Correct. So, Anne Gutman in nineteen ninety two ninety three
Speaker 3: handled the case of Everton Wagstaff and Reginald Connor, who
Speaker 3: were accused of a kidnapping and murder of a sixteen
Speaker 3: year old girl, but the judge tossed the murder charge
Speaker 3: because there was a lack of evidence, but they went
Speaker 3: forward with the kidnapping charge. Gutman's case, she was basing
Speaker 3: it on the word of a heroin addicted sex worker
Speaker 3: named Runilda Capella.
Speaker 2: Remember that Teresa Gomez was Scarcella's go to witness. She
Speaker 2: was addicted to Kracken, a sometimes sex worker who helped
Speaker 2: the DA in six Scarcela cases where she claimed to
Speaker 2: be an eyewitness to a murder.
Speaker 1: That seemed like a preposterous number, right, Runilda Capella was
Speaker 1: said to have witnessed many more crimes than that.
Speaker 3: Basically, what happened, at least during the trial was that
Speaker 3: Capella was kept in a lock hospital ward for heroin withdrawal.
Speaker 1: It was later reported that she'd gotten cold feet about testifying,
Speaker 1: so the DA arrested her and held her.
Speaker 3: For three days prior to the trial to make sure
Speaker 3: she'd be there to testify in court. As they get
Speaker 3: to twelve to twenty three years, but then there's a
Speaker 3: hearing in twenty ten I think it was, in which
Speaker 3: it's revealed that cops had used Capella as a witness
Speaker 3: fifteen to twenty times. But Gutman did not disclose that right,
Speaker 3: So Gutman did not tell the defense for those two
Speaker 3: defendants that this person has this track record.
Speaker 2: And under the rules, a prosecutor cannot hide evidence that
Speaker 2: favors the defendant that's considered rigging the game.
Speaker 3: Totally preposterous case against these two guys based on this
Speaker 3: really faulty witness. But then it went to the Appellate Division,
Speaker 3: and the Appellate Division dismiss the indictment. They just said,
Speaker 3: this case is a bad case from the jump, and
Speaker 3: we're tossing the conviction and also tossing the indictment. So
Speaker 3: it was a forceful statement by the Appellate Division about
Speaker 3: Gutman's case. Right that happens in twenty fifteen, the same
Speaker 3: year that Derek Hamilton's case is reversed by the CIREU.
Speaker 1: Right, the Appellate Court specifically challenged the credibility of Capella,
Speaker 1: the key I witness.
Speaker 3: So Gutman's handiwork is exposed in two different cases involving
Speaker 3: three different convictions in twenty fifteen, and what happens. Gutman
Speaker 3: remains the head of the DA's Early Case Assessment BURO
Speaker 3: through twenty nineteen or so.
Speaker 1: This Brunehilda saturname Brunilda Brunilda. So you're saying she's used.
Speaker 3: A dozen times, fifteen to twenty times.
Speaker 1: And the DA obviously knew that she was a repeat
Speaker 1: witness and a terrible drug addict.
Speaker 3: Correct. It makes you wonder if there were others out
Speaker 3: there who could put them to shame.
Speaker 1: So would you say pattern in practice of using known
Speaker 1: unreliable witnesses to convict people.
Speaker 3: It certainly looks like one, a pattern for sure.
Speaker 1: And has anybody ever picked out that pattern and said,
Speaker 1: we need to look at all fifteen or twenty of
Speaker 1: Brunilda cases.
Speaker 3: Not that I know them.
Speaker 1: Remember that the district attorneys CRU looked at all of
Speaker 1: Teresa Gomez's cases and moved to overturn four of the
Speaker 1: six of them based on Gomez's lack of credibility. So
Speaker 1: they looked at Scarcella's witness, but as far as we know,
Speaker 1: they did not look at the much more prolific witness, Brunilda,
Speaker 1: the one favored by the Adas. And I want to
Speaker 1: tell you about one more example of using an unreliable witness,
Speaker 1: another one we stumbled onto. This one involves an Ada
Speaker 1: named Ken Tab who was head of the DA's Homicide
Speaker 1: Bureau for some years he was a prosecutor connected to
Speaker 1: one of the overturned Scarcella convictions. That was the token
Speaker 1: Booth case. And just fyi, he's been quoted by a
Speaker 1: defense attorney as saying, you can't let the truth get
Speaker 1: in the way of justice. Consider that for a moment, anyway,
Speaker 1: What did he do that relates to unreliable witnesses?
Speaker 2: I love this one. How brought into the case of snitch,
Speaker 2: A professional snitch who was so used to helping the
Speaker 2: DA that he kept Jobb's phone number in a bible
Speaker 2: he carried with him. A guy who seemed to overhear
Speaker 2: a lot of incriminating conversations that proved really useful to
Speaker 2: the DA and, as one might imagine, to him as
Speaker 2: well in exchange for testifying he was seeking help with
Speaker 2: his sentences. Shabaz was so unreliable so often that eventually
Speaker 2: a judge banned him from contacting any law enforcement unless
Speaker 2: it was about his own crimes.
Speaker 1: Can it really be a coincidence that, even just anecdotally,
Speaker 1: almost by chance, we've come across three witnesses who were
Speaker 1: used by the DA over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Three witnesses who were found to be unreliable and who
Speaker 1: claimed to have knowledge of something like forty felonies.
Speaker 2: One would ask, what the hell was going on.
Speaker 1: Any chance we're noting a pattern here one witness cases
Speaker 1: using an extremely unreliable witness.
Speaker 3: I found out from someone who worked in the cru
Speaker 3: investigator actually involved in some of these early cases that
Speaker 3: got overturned, and she said they never looked at it
Speaker 3: in that light, right, even though she had some she
Speaker 3: had saw some of the prosecutors with multiple reversals, She said,
Speaker 3: they never saw a pattern. So you know, if they
Speaker 3: were looking for a pattern, they might have found they
Speaker 3: may have found it. If they're not looking for a pattern,
Speaker 3: you can say there is no pattern.
Speaker 1: I can tell you what the pattern is, using the
Speaker 1: unreliable witnesses again and again and again. My question to
Speaker 1: you is why the hell is the DA not done it?
Speaker 1: Why do that in Scarcella cases but not where essentially
Speaker 1: the power exists.
Speaker 3: Because that shows their culpability the das.
Speaker 1: So you're saying the DA's and protecting its own.
Speaker 3: They were say, are we really going to initiate the
Speaker 3: process ourselves? Are we going to acknowledge that we've done
Speaker 3: X number of wrongful convictions. But I don't think they're
Speaker 3: going to pursue that right. I mean they should, they could,
Speaker 3: and they should, but I don't think they will.
Speaker 1: Interesting, I think you brought a couple other examples.
Speaker 3: In twenty seventeen, there were a couple of different exoneration cases,
Speaker 3: and one of those involved the case of Jabbar Washington.
Speaker 2: This was a Scarcella case.
Speaker 3: The prosecutor in that case was Kyle Reeves. In twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one, a Brooklyn judge reversed a Brooklyn case that
Speaker 3: Reeves had handled, and that in doing so, God criticized
Speaker 3: Reeves for his quote blatantly intentional misstatements to the jury.
Speaker 3: So clearly stated that Reeves is distorting the evidence, which
Speaker 3: he apparently had we had done back in the Jabbar
Speaker 3: Washington case.
Speaker 1: So we've now heard three cases of ada's lying or
Speaker 1: at best exaggerating the facts to the jury. And remember
Speaker 1: this is without any comprehensive database.
Speaker 2: It's misleading the jury. Another pattern worth investigating.
Speaker 1: Let's read the statement from the current DA's communications person.
Speaker 1: This is something he gave to Ted. Quote. Public shaming
Speaker 1: and blaming individuals as opposed to systemic issues are not
Speaker 1: part of the objective when the office reviews past cases.
Speaker 2: I find it interesting that they decide to characterize it
Speaker 2: as shaming and blaming rather than what it otherwise could
Speaker 2: be considered, is accountability ted.
Speaker 1: So you've looked at the Brooklyn DA very closely, what's
Speaker 1: your judgment about their approach to doing justice? The word
Speaker 1: corrupt gets thrown around by any means it's necessary. But
Speaker 1: are they good guys? I want you to be the hammer?
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, So if you're a liberal, typically you
Speaker 3: would see good people in bad situations trying to do
Speaker 3: their best. But I don't view it from that lens.
Speaker 3: I'm more of a leftist, and so I see a
Speaker 3: bad system that produces bad actions. I don't judge them
Speaker 3: necessarily as bad people, but they did bad things. I
Speaker 3: would like to think that I uncovered some uncomfortable truths
Speaker 3: about what these prosecutors have done. Certainly the name should
Speaker 3: be attached to these wrongful convictions. I'm not saying I'm
Speaker 3: damning them for eternity, but this is a fact that
Speaker 3: they did take away decades of people's lives. So I
Speaker 3: think if they can't face any real consequences, their work
Speaker 3: needs to be acknowledged because many of these prosecutors went
Speaker 3: on to successful careers and in some cases they kept
Speaker 3: prosecuting people wrongfully.
Speaker 1: Fair to say that your investigation has shown that there
Speaker 1: is no accountability.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think there's We you can't point to
Speaker 3: anything that any consequence that any prosecutor has experienced that
Speaker 3: amounts to accountability.
Speaker 1: Right, So, no matter how many wrongful convictions you can
Speaker 1: show that somebody is that a prosecutor is responsible for,
Speaker 1: there's been no consequence to their career in any way.
Speaker 3: Not do we know of publicly those kinds of things
Speaker 3: could have happened, and they just don't want to call
Speaker 3: attention to it. So we don't know if they move
Speaker 3: people around or move them, move them out of the office,
Speaker 3: and and so on, you know, So we do. The
Speaker 3: personnel matters are in turn all things generally, and so
Speaker 3: we don't We don't always.
Speaker 1: Know, Okay, but in the Scarcella cases that we've been
Speaker 1: able to that you've been able to look at, no
Speaker 1: consequences to any assistant district attorney.
Speaker 3: Not that I can trace.
Speaker 1: And some have gone on to what kind of offices.
Speaker 3: Well, we have at least a few judges in uh,
Speaker 3: Nassau County in Manhattan Criminal Court and NASA DA Kathleen
Speaker 3: Rice went onto the House of Representatives for four terms
Speaker 3: from a long island and many have gone on to
Speaker 3: successful lucrative careers in private practice, uh and on down
Speaker 3: the line.
Speaker 1: So not to say that crime pays, but it would
Speaker 1: seem that cutting corners in prosecution.
Speaker 3: Pays in terms of the gaining the convictions. Yes, you
Speaker 3: know that's what there, That's what their assignment was, and
Speaker 3: they got the convictions.
Speaker 1: And propelling their own careers. Correct.
Speaker 2: Don't you think it's time to look inside investigate patterns
Speaker 2: of relying on bad when it is lying to jurys.
Speaker 2: Isn't it time to investigate what that meant to people's lives?
Speaker 1: We asked the Brooklyn District Attorney for a comment, and
Speaker 1: they gave us a statement. They said that the standard
Speaker 1: for re examining a law enforcement agent's past cases is
Speaker 1: a quote credible indication of intentional misconduct. The statement continues
Speaker 1: expanding this rational standard to every instance where a judge
Speaker 1: or cru finds faults in a prosecutor's work is absurd. So,
Speaker 1: and this is me talking about the DA's office. The
Speaker 1: distinction being made by the District Attorney is that that
Speaker 1: office believes that Scarcella's misconduct was intentional, but apparently does
Speaker 1: not believe that it's colleagues, the ADAS did anything wrong intentionally.
Speaker 1: We'll be following up on this, but let me just
Speaker 1: say now, lying to a jury does not seem to
Speaker 1: me like an accidental oversight. It seems to me like
Speaker 1: there must be some intention involved in that. The DA
Speaker 1: statement continued. The current Conviction Review Unit is the largest,
Speaker 1: best resourced, and most active in the United States. It
Speaker 1: goes on Brooklyn. Cru will continue to accept petitions from
Speaker 1: anyone who claims that they were unjustly convicted. It will
Speaker 1: continue to conduct its reviews with the highest standards of professionalism, transparency,
Speaker 1: and accountability, and it will continue to set an example
Speaker 1: for jurisdictions across the country.
Speaker 2: If anyone has a thought on this, leave a message
Speaker 2: for us at one eight three three eight Burden.
Speaker 1: One note reached out to all the prosecutors named in
Speaker 1: this episode. None took us up on our invitation to comment.
Speaker 1: For more on Ted's findings, read his excellent article which
Speaker 1: came out of this research. It's called the Scarcellophiles. When
Speaker 1: unethical prosecutors get off Scott Free. It's in the Independent.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Drew Nellis. Our associate producer
Speaker 2: and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Sound design was provided
Speaker 2: by Bianca Salitis.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Ryan Alderman, Dax Devlin Ross and me
Speaker 1: Steve Fishman. We are your hosts. The Burden is a
Speaker 1: production of Orbit Media. Thanks for listening, and now that
Speaker 1: you've made it through the credits, don't forget to sign up.
Speaker 1: To be a subscriber is easy. Go to the show
Speaker 1: page on Apple Podcasts, pay your two ninety nine per
Speaker 1: month and you're there. Thank you very much. Season two
Speaker 1: of The Burden Empire on Blood will be available everywhere
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts on August seventh. All episodes will
Speaker 1: be available early and ad free, along with exclusive bonus
Speaker 1: content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse, our subscription
Speaker 1: channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety nine a month.