Louis Scarcella, a retired NYPD detective, is a talkative, charming fellow and the president of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club. He's the sort who plunges into the ice-cold Atlantic wearing a Santa Claus hat.
All of which is fine, unless you happen to be on the wrong end of his charms.
David Ranta, who served more than two decades in a maximum-security prison for a murder he almost certainly did not commit, was one of those unfortunates. In 1990, Mr. Scarcella was assigned to investigate the murder of a Hasidic rabbi, and his rule-breaking, cowboy tactics and - officials now say - coaching of a witness played no small role in convincing a jury to put Mr. Ranta behind bars. Mr. Scarcella denied coaching any witnesses.
The Brooklyn district attorney's office, whose prosecutors once vigorously defended Mr. Scarcella's conduct during the trial, agreed last week that much of the evidence against Mr. Ranta was rotten and asked a judge to release him.
Theresa Capra was another of those unfortunates. A decade ago, she was a 30-year-old assistant principal at Cobble Hill High School in Brooklyn, off to a fine career. Then a teacher accused her of fixing test scores. That same teacher accused her principal of covering this up. And that teacher intimated the cover-up could extend to the department's headquarters in Lower Manhattan.
It all seemed so ludicrous, Ms. Capra thought, a tempest sure to blow over. Then the Office of Special Investigations assigned Mr. Scarcella, who had retired from the police force, to the case. For a year he slammed tables, yelled at, threatened and interrogated teachers at that high school.
He conferred hundreds of times with Ms. Capra's accuser and let him write much of the final report, which upheld every charge.
Mr. Scarcella even recommended that the state attorney general consider criminal charges against Ms. Capra.
It was devastation piled atop devastation - none of it grounded in fact.
The special commissioner of investigation for the schools, Richard J. Condon, took a second look at the case against Theresa Capra. His 67-page report in 2007 was emphatic: Mr. Scarcella's investigation was "flawed from its inception"; "no witnesses provided credible evidence"; and the retired detective had acted as an "agent" of Ms. Capra's accuser.
Mr. Scarcella and his superiors resigned after the release of Mr. Condon's report. Mr. Scarcella has maintained that he was correct in going after Mr. Ranta and Ms. Capra. "I never framed anyone in my life," he said recently.
Ms. Capra disputes that. "It was a nightmare I couldn't awaken from," she said. "One teacher and that detective wanted to ruin not just my career but my life."
Just two weeks ago, I sat in a maximum-security prison east of Buffalo and heard Mr. Ranta voice much the same thought. He recalled listening as Mr. Scarcella testified against him, and to the jury as it pronounced his guilt. "I'd lie there in the cell at night and I think: I'm the only one in the world who knows I'm innocent."
This is an old, plaintive question: Who watches the investigators? You could argue justice is done. The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, agreed to free Mr. Ranta. And Mr. Condon restored the reputations and careers of Ms. Capra and the principal, Lennel George.
Yet John O'Mara, the chief of the district attorney's Conviction Integrity Unit, who says Mr. Scarcella once was one of their busiest homicide detectives, ruled out combing through old cases in search of mistakes by this detective.
The flaws in the cases of Mr. Ranta and Ms. Capra are quite similar. Mr. Scarcella decided from the get-go on the identity of his heroes, and of his villains.
He threatened the principal, Mr. George: "Today is your last day as principal."
Mr. Scarcella was focused with no less certainty on Mr. Ranta. He had photographs of other suspects - and never showed those to witnesses. He rarely took notes, even of sensitive interviews. During what he claimed was Mr. Ranta's confession, he said he never asked a single question of the suspect.
"That's not my style," the detective told the judge in 1991. "I told him what I thought of him."
This is damage never repaired. Last Friday, Mr. Ranta ate a celebratory steak, and a few hours later suffered a heart attack. He survived. Ms. Capra married and had children and teaches at a community college in central New Jersey. And yet ...
"That detective took away 23 months of my life, and, sadly, 23 years from Ranta," she said. "There's no price tag on it, like for a broken bone."
By Michael Powell - NY Times
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