Witness Recants in Review of Brooklyn Detective’s Cases
By FRANCES ROBLES
A sweeping investigation into cases handled years ago by a retired Brooklyn homicide detective has turned up a witness to a 1995 murder who says the police coached him into giving false testimony.
The witness, Sharron Ivory, gave crucial evidence in one of roughly 40 trial convictions handled by the detective, Louis Scarcella, that are now being reviewed by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. The review was prompted by revelations that Mr. Scarcella sometimes engaged in questionable tactics, and may have helped frame an innocent man in another case.
Mr. Ivory was interviewed in recent weeks, first by a pair of detectives and then by an assistant district attorney, he said in a telephone interview. He told them he was lying nearly 20 years ago when he said he could identify the man who shot his cousin, a little girl who was struck by a stray bullet in a case that caused considerable public outrage.
Mr. Ivory’s account is just one facet of the broad investigation into Mr. Scarcella’s cases that was announced nearly five months ago by the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes. Going back decades, and covering years’ worth of convictions, it is a highly unusual re-examining of the work of a detective who, at the time, was among the most productive in New York City. And while Mr. Ivory says he was interviewed, lawyers for other defendants, as well as some of those convicted, said the review appeared to be moving in fits and starts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/nyregion/witness-recants-in-review-of-brooklyn-detectives-cases.html?partner=socialflow&smid=tw-nytmetro&_r=0
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