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| Jonathan Fleming, hugs his attorney Anthony Mayol while his other attorney Taylor Koss applaud in Brooklyn's Supreme court, after a judge declared him a free man on Tuesday April 8, 2014 in New York. Fleming, who spent almost a quarter-century behind bars for murder, was cleared of a killing that happened when he was 1,100 miles away on a Disney World vacation in 1989. |
NEW YORK (AP)
-- From the day of his 1989 arrest in a deadly New York City shooting,
Jonathan Fleming said he had been more than 1,000 miles away, on a
vacation at Disney World. Despite having documents to back him up, he
was convicted of murder.
Prosecutors now agree
with him, and Fleming left a Brooklyn court as a free man Tuesday after
spending nearly a quarter-century behind bars.
Fleming,
now 51, tearfully hugged his lawyers as relatives cheered, "Thank you,
God!" after a judge dismissed the case. A key eyewitness had recanted,
newly found witnesses implicated someone else and prosecutors' review of
authorities' files turned up documents supporting Fleming's alibi.
"After 25 years, come hug your mother," Patricia Fleming said, and her only child did.
"I feel wonderful," he said afterward. "I've always had faith. I knew that this day would come someday."
The
exoneration, first reported by the Daily News, comes amid scrutiny of
Brooklyn prosecutors' process for reviewing questionable convictions,
scrutiny that comes partly from the new district attorney, Kenneth
Thompson. He said in a statement that after a months-long review, he
decided to drop the case against Fleming because of "key alibi facts
that place Fleming in Florida at the time of the murder."
From
the start, Fleming told authorities he had been in Orlando when a
friend, Darryl "Black" Rush, was shot to death in Brooklyn early on Aug.
15, 1989. Authorities suggested the shooting was motivated by a dispute
over money.
Fleming had plane tickets, videos
and postcards from his trip, said his lawyers, Anthony Mayol and Taylor
Koss. But prosecutors at the time suggested he could have made a quick
round-trip plane jaunt to be in New York, and a woman testified that she
had seen him shoot Rush. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison
and was due to have his first parole hearing soon.
The
eyewitness recanted her testimony soon after Fleming's 1990 conviction,
saying she had lied so police would cut her loose for an unrelated
arrest, but Fleming lost his appeals.
The defense asked the district attorney's office to review the case last year.
Defense
investigators found previously untapped witnesses who pointed to
someone else as the gunman, the attorneys said, declining to give the
witnesses' or potential suspect's names before prosecutors look into
them. The district attorney's office declined to comment on its
investigative plans.
Prosecutors' review
produced a hotel receipt that Fleming paid in Florida about five hours
before the shooting - a document that police evidently had found in
Fleming's pocket when they arrested him.
Prosecutors also found an
October 1989 Orlando police letter to New York detectives, saying some
employees at an Orlando hotel had told investigators they remembered
Fleming.
Neither the receipt nor the police
letter had been provided to Fleming's initial defense lawyer, despite
rules that generally require investigators to turn over possibly
exculpatory material.
Patricia Fleming, 71, was with her son in Orlando at the time of the crime and testified at his trial.
"I
knew he didn't do it, because I was there," she said. "When they gave
my son 25 to life, I thought I would die in that courtroom."
Still, she said, "I never did give up, because I knew he was innocent."
Thompson
took office in January, after unseating longtime District Attorney
Charles "Joe" Hynes with a campaign that focused partly on questionable
convictions on Hynes' watch. Hynes had created a special conviction
integrity unit to review false-conviction claims, but some saw the
effort as slow-moving and defensive.
Thompson
has agreed to dismiss the murder convictions of two men who spent more
than 20 years in prison for a triple homicide. He also dropped his
predecessor's appeal challenging the 2013 release of another man who had
served 22 years in prison on a questioned murder conviction.
On
Tuesday, Jonathan Fleming left court with an arm around his mother's
shoulders and the process of rebuilding his life ahead of him.
Asked
about his plans, he said: "I'm going to go eat dinner with my mother
and my family, and I'm going to live the rest of my life."
