 |
| 等 级：资深长老 |
| 经 验 值：5855 |
| 魅 力 值：3513 |
| 龙 币：12359 |
| 积 分：7806.2 |
| 注册日期：2002-04-15 |
| |
|
|
|
6月12日阅读,纽约时报~
Freed After 17 Years
Convictions vacated in Lynbrook teen's 1984 rape-murder
By Robin Topping and Chau Lam
Staff Writers
June 12, 2003
Three men who spent 17 years in prison for the 1984 rape and murder of a 16-year-old Lynbrook girl were freed yesterday after a judge set aside their convictions based on DNA evidence showing that semen inside the victim belonged to none of them.
But while Nassau County prosecutors agreed the evidence was sufficient to release the men, they said it did not necessarily clear them from guilt. They said they will investigate further before deciding whether to bring them to trial again.
In the meantime, the men were all freed on bail, and one by one, John Restivo, 44, John Kogut, 39, and Dennis Halstead, 48, walked out of the Nassau County Jail and into the arms of their waiting families.
"I have been put in hell for 18 years," Halstead said in the East Meadow facility's parking lot, moments before he embraced his four children and one grandchild. "Now maybe this will be my heaven ... I have waited so long for this day."
Halstead said he was "bitter more than angry" at being robbed of seeing his children grow up, and that "nothing can make be done to make up for what happened."
For Restivo, Kogut, and Halstead, their release was the culmination of a legal battle that began the day they were convicted by juries in two separate trials in Nassau County Court. It turned, ultimately, on the chance discovery last fall of a test tube containing untested, intact seminal fluid taken from the victim, Theresa Fusco, when lawyers were sorting through boxes of trial evidence at police headquarters in Mineola.
Court of Claims Justice Victor Ort vacated the convictions after Nassau District Attorney Denis Dillon agreed to join in the defense's application to set aside the jury verdicts. But until Dillon decides whether to retry the cases, the murder indictment against the three stands. Dillon noted that prosecutors still have a written and videotaped confession given by Kogut after his arrest -- a statement that defense attorneys say was false and coerced.
"If this is a mistake we can't remedy what has been done," Dillon said, not conceding that it was.
Fusco's killing was a shocking crime that intensified an uneasiness on South Shore because it came amid the disappearance of at least two other young women who lived in close proximity to Fusco, were reported missing and later found dead. Those murders are unsolved.
Restivo's trial lawyer, Theodore Robinson, said, "The police needed to solve this crime. There was a tremendous amount of community pressure. But my client has always maintained his innocence and now it's been proven."
In court, Restivo's defense attorney, Barry Scheck, said the new evidence meets the required legal standard for setting aside a conviction because there was a "reasonable probability" that if it was presented in a new trial, the jury would vote to acquit.
Peter Weinstein, Dillon's appeals bureau chief, said in court that while prosecutors agreed to set aside the conviction, they maintain the original trial was fair and noted the DNA technology used to exonerate the three had not been developed at the time.
After the trial in 1986, DNA testing was done twice on a vaginal swab taken from the victim, at the defense's request. One test result in 1993 was inconclusive. Another, in 2001 using newer methods, excluded the three and indicated there was another man involved. But prosecutors still contended the semen sample was small and the defendants' DNA might have been on semen not recovered.
Based on the 2001 result, a defense team consisting of attorneys and law students from Innocence Projects at Pace University School of Law in Westchester and Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University in Manhattan, Robinson, and a high-powered Washington, D.C-based law firm, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, reinvestigated the case.
They pored over boxes of evidence that had been in police storage since the trial and discovered the untested sample that prosecutors didn't know about. Using state-of-the-art DNA testing on that sample, a lab found this year that the DNA profile did not fit any of the three men in prison -- a result that persuaded Dillon to consent to the application.
Ort said in court the legal papers detailing the DNA evidence are "compelling in details and compelling in legal arguments. I am going to grant the application." Family members who packed the courtroom broke into applause and many burst into tears.
Outside the jail last night, Restivo called it "a day of joy and jubilation," and said, "I always knew DNA testing would vindicate me. The criminal justice system needs some safeguards because too many mistakes do happen.
"I always had hope. You see, innocence is a good tool for hope," Restivo said.
Kogut said, "I am glad to be out."
Halstead's children, all now grown, Restivo's brothers and mother and Kogut's wife, Lisa, said they had never lost faith their loved ones would be freed.
"I knew he was innocent. I never doubted that," said a tearful Lisa Kogut, who was engaged to John Kogut when he was tried and married him in prison.
Fusco's family was not in court and declined comment.
The defendants sat in court showing little emotion. Halstead and Restivo winked and smiled at their families afterward as they were being led out in handcuffs, and Halstead gestured to his orange jail slippers and said to his children, "You like these shoes?" generating laughter among his family.
Halstead's daughter, Melissa, put up her Oceanside house as security for the $300,000 bail Ort ordered for the three, while Restivo's mother, Frida, put up her Lynbrook home. Kogut will live in Princeton, N.J., with attorneys from the Centurian Ministries, a nonprofit group that does legal advocacy, which secured Kogut's bail. Adele Bernard, from Pace, represented Halstead, and Terry Maroney of the Wilmer firm represented Kogut.
Kogut said in the confession that the three raped her, then he strangled her to keep her quiet. The Kogut confession could not be used against Restivo and Halstead, but prosecutors presented testimony corroborating that statement from witnesses who either had criminal charges pending against them or who were jailhouse informants. A strand of Fusco's hair was also found in Restivo's van and testing showed it had come from Fusco shortly after her death, consistent with the prosecution theory that the murder and rape took place in the van, and the body was dumped shortly afterward.
However, hair analysis has improved and now it shows that the hair had come off Fusco's head at least eight hours after her death, which would have been inconsistent with the prosecution's theory and raises questions about how the hair got in the van.
|
|
--
long arm of coincidence here~
 |
|
|
2003-06-12 16:42:06
