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Monday, December 17, 2012

NY - Innocent man free after year


In another black eye for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, a judge dismissed all charges against a 65-year-old man who had spent more than a year in jail.

The stunning turnaround came less than two weeks after the man’s defense attorney alleged prosecutorial misconduct including witness and evidence manipulation, as The Post first reported.

Ronald Bozeman was arrested for a $9,000 armed robbery near Atlantic Terminal last year and indicted after the two victims testified that he was the gunman, court records show.

But later, the two victims told a second grand jury that a second man, George Johnson, was actually the gunman — and prosecutors moved forward with the case despite the conflicting testimony, said defense attorney Mark Bederow.
 
“The idea that the same assistant district attorney would indict two men as the same person intentionally within six weeks of each other and not recognize the serious problems in the prosecution is unbelievable,” said Bederow.

Bozeman was all smiles as he left Brooklyn Supreme Court with his family last Wednesday — a free man once again.

“I feel relieved and not as bitter as I thought I would be,” said Bozeman, who had been denied bail and faced life in prison. “The first thing I’m going to do is go get something to eat with my family.”

* A federal judge last month blasted Hynes for turning a blind eye to prosecutorial misconduct that wrongly threw a man in jail for 15 years in the murder of a rabbi.

The man is suing the city for $150 million over the case, which was handled by Michael Vecchione, now head of the DA’s rackets bureau.

The botched case is the latest in a string of black marks for the staff of Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes:

* Lawrence Williams, 36, was freed in April after two years behind bars when a Rikers inmate confessed to the crime.

* Four men charged with raping and prostituting a young Orthodox Jewish woman saw all their charges dropped in June amid allegations prosecutors failed to disclose that the accuser recanted her claims just a day after making them in 2010.

— The case against a man charged with murdering his step-daughter with a hammer ended in a mistrial in October after it was revealed a prosecutor had ignored his request for a lawyer before obtaining a confession, The Post exclusively reported at the time. The man was convicted in a later trial.          





NY POST

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