New York Man is Cleared as Prosecutor Faces Misconduct Allegations

06.10.10

Brooklyn prosecutors agreed on Tuesday to release a man convicted 15 years ago of a murder he says he didn’t commit. Jabbar Collins has sought for years to prove in court that he didn’t have a fair trial, and prosecutors admitted last month that critical evidence was withheld at trial from Collins’ attorney. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office agreed to clear Collins before a hearing into misconduct in the case was set to resume this week.

Judge Dora L. Irizarry, of the United States District Court in Brooklyn, lamented that in agreeing to free Mr. Collins, the district attorney’s office had avoided a hearing that would have offered greater transparency into the case’s “troubling history.”

“It is indeed beyond disappointing, it is really sad that the district attorney’s office persists in standing firm and saying that it did nothing wrong here,” the judge said. She described the handling of the case by the district attorney’s office as “shameful.”


Read more about the case in today’s New York Times

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The cases of wrongful convictions uncovered by DNA testing are replete with evidence of fraud or misconduct by prosecutors or police departments.

Learn more about misconduct as a cause of wrongful conviction here

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