Brooklyn DA on Fewer Shootings, More Exonerations

Title: Brooklyn DA on Fewer Shootings, More Exonerations

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Brigid Bergin: It's the Brian Lair show and WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. Now we turn to Brooklyn, where the district attorney's office is working on overturning wrongful convictions. The unit, founded in 2014, has now recommended the exoneration of the 40th person since it began. In related news, public safety in the borough has increased as the number of shootings have gone down. We'll talk about all of this and more with Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. DA Gonzalez, welcome back to WNYC.

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: Good morning, Brigid.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we can take some phone calls for Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez, especially but not exclusively, if you live in Brooklyn, the number 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text at that number. DA, Brooklyn's conviction review unit is the first standalone bureau of its kind in the nation. It's also the largest. Can you introduce listeners to the work this unit does?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: The work of Brooklyn's conviction review unit is so fundamental to the concept of justice. We are looking at past mistakes in our criminal legal system to see whether or not people who are incarcerated or have been incarcerated had received a fair trial and whether or not there are people who are in jail who are actually innocent. As we know, there are over 2 million people in prison. We believe that there are thousands of people that have been wrongfully convicted.

In Brooklyn, we are working around the clock looking at cases where people have evidence that we can review to see whether or not they were actually wrongfully convicted. It's an ongoing process. Yesterday we announced the 40th vacatur, which, quite frankly, is tremendous work because it's more than all the other DA's offices to get combined.

Brigid Bergin: Well, I want to talk a little bit more about how the process works. Does your office just independently go through prior convictions or are cases sent to you by referrals from advocacy groups? You mentioned evidence for looking at some of the cases. How does it begin?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: It's a great question, and it's a little bit of both. Primarily at this point now, we're looking for referrals. Yesterday's referral came from Fordham University defense clinic. That was how that came in. We have a form. It's available online. It's a 10-page form. You can fill it out. You do not need a lawyer to fill it out, and you'll submit it. Basically, what we're trying to find out, is there something for us to investigate or-- Because someone can say they're innocent, but if there's nothing to investigate, then we'll probably not accept that case.

Many of the cases come directly from lawyers, but of them, the 40 people we vacated, two of the people had no lawyers and were assigned attorneys during the process. It is trying to get to everyone who has a claim of wrongful conviction. In the past, we've also looked at certain cases where we had problematic police detectives where information became available to us, and we started to look at their cases without any referrals from any lawyers.

Brigid Bergin: Out of the 40 convictions your office has overturned, are there any through lines in terms of who these people are and what they're accused of?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: Most of the cases are homicide cases. The reason for that is many of those people remained incarcerated. We're obviously trying to get to the cases that matter the most, getting people out of prison who do not belong there. Unfortunately, the through line is race and class. Almost all but one are either Black or Hispanic defendants. It was one person who was not either Black or Hispanic, and all of them were men, except for one African American woman.

We see race and class. Coming from the most impoverished neighborhoods, mostly not having paid attorneys and just really, quite frankly, consistent with what happens in our communities in terms of where gun violence strikes in poorer neighborhoods, in Black and Latino communities.

Brigid Bergin: As you mentioned, your office announced yesterday the 40th individual to be exonerated by Brooklyn's Conviction Review Unit. Can you tell us the story of this individual, Keith Roberts?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: It's actually fascinating. Keith Roberts lived right near the incident where the shooting took place that took a man's life. We believe that the person who actually testified against him was involved in the killing of that individual. The police get to the scene, they encounter the witness, and we believe the witness misdirected the police to Mr. Keith Roberts. He was arrested. There's not much of an investigation. In fact, there's really no investigation because detectives aren't involved. There was a patrol police officer arrest. A patrol officer arrest him, the witness identifies him, and the process starts.

He goes to jail. He had an alibi defense that wasn't fully investigated. His case gets overturned eight years later by the appellate courts. Then he's faced with a difficult choice to either go back on trial or to take a plea to a lesser charge. He chose to take a plea. Obviously, anyone can understand why he would do that because that plea meant that he would never have to return to prison if he just said he was involved in the killing of this man. He said that because he had a sick mother and he had young, young children when he went to jail. He had a two-year-old daughter and a six-month-old son. He copped out and took the plea.

What's amazing about the conviction review work that was done on his case is here's a man who pled guilty, and yet, considering everything that was presented to us by the Fordham law clinic on that 10-page affidavit, we understood that people can be pressured into pleading guilty, and we still took his case and reinvestigated it. I am confident that he was wrongfully convicted.

Brigid Bergin: Thank you for sharing the story. I want to go to one of our callers who has a question. Stephen in Manhattan, thanks for calling WNYC.

Stephen: Hi. One of the questions I have is, are you finding things in reviewing these that could help you educate prosecutors and the people who do the original trial so they don't make the same mistakes over and over again?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: Wonderful question. The answer is yes. In fact, that is one of the most important pieces of this Conviction Review Unit, besides giving people back their good name and freeing people who don't belong in prison, because the same mistakes happen over and over. It's often tunnel vision. A police detective or a prosecutor has a theory of the case, and you validate the things that support your theory, and you give short drift to the things that do not support your theory, and you overlook clues of innocence. In Mr. Roberts' case, there was actually a early description of the shooter that did not fit him and actually fit the person who testified against him, as an example.

What we're also learning is a lot more about the science of a lot of this, like the issues related to misidentifications, false confessions, and a lot of junk science, things that we thought was reliable evidence to go into court, whether it be arson investigations or bite marks. There's so much that was previously allowed by courts as evidence against individuals that today we're looking at and knowing that that that is not good science and should not be used as evidence.

Also importantly, we're using the exonerees in our office to come speak to our lawyers so they can understand the significance of when they make this mistake, what could happen to families and to the individuals involved, as well as our victim survivor families who are also harmed by this work. We're making a lot of progress because not only are we doing that, we're also training DAs in other states about the work that we did. My office issued a report about three years ago now, 426 Years. It was about 25 wrongful convictions that I think are a good starting point for any district attorney to look at about common mistakes made in wrongful conviction matters.

Brigid Bergin: DA, a listener texts a question that I think follows up on what we're talking about. They write, "What happens to the lawyers and police involved in these wrongful prosecutions? Are there ever any consequences when they knew that the person was innocent but prosecuted them anyway?"

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: We haven't found that kind of situation where we could prove that a person in bad faith prosecuted someone who they knew they were innocent. There's always claims that they should have known, but in terms of actual evidence, we've never had a smoking gun in terms of like, oh, we know that there's evidence. There's text messages or emails or phone conversations that we've been recorded that they say we're going forward knowing the person is innocent. We haven't seen that. I think what people are calling out for is accountability.

Of course, people should be held accountable for ruining people's lives. Unfortunately, in much of the work that I'm doing, looking at cases 20 and 30 years ago or even 15 years ago, statute of limitations runs on those cases. Unless they change the law, it's very unlikely that anyone will be held criminally responsible. On all of these cases, people do sue in civil court and are often awarded damages, and the person who's responsible is deposed and held accountable in a lot of ways.

I also want to say this, in every one of these cases, I'm the only DA in the country that's doing this. We put out a full report on what we found, what the original trial showed, and why we think a judge should vacate it. That often reveals the errors of the people involved, the lawyers, the police officers, sometimes the judges.

Brigid Bergin: DA, this 40th exoneration is likely the biggest number in the nation. Your office notes that it's more than all the other DA offices in New York combined. Why do you think this isn't a bigger deal in other places?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: It's hard work. First of all, a DA has to admit that his or her office made a mistake and played a role in the wrongful conviction. That is often difficult for people to do politically. As the last caller asked about accountability in your own office when you have lawyers who are involved in wrongful convictions or detectives that your office works with on wrongful convictions, so I think there's a lot of fear. I do believe that less and less now, but a lot of prosecutors do not believe that they have people wrongfully convicted.

I think that most of the time they believe strongly in the guilt of the people they convict, but as the work shows, as long as we have humans testifying in court, you never know. You could never 100% discount that there's a mistake being made. At least two or three of the cases we've looked at, we found that people who testified, testified falsely and contributed to someone's conviction. We have to be very mindful of that, but I do believe that there's a certain amount of fear that the internal review process is like an IAB for a DA's office.

In my office, we have 10 full-time employees working on wrongful conviction, and they do not prosecute other cases. They do not have to worry about their relationships with detectives or the police department or, quite frankly, even with their colleagues in the trial division. They're independent. They sit on their own floor, and so they are given the ability to investigate and call into their offices to question witnesses as appropriate.

Brigid Bergin: I want to talk about some of the public safety numbers from this summer, particularly where we tend to see a spike in shootings. This was actually one of the safest in recent years. Your office recorded 13 gun-related homicides this summer, a 24% decrease from 2023, and 84 shootings, down 11%. Can you talk a little bit about those numbers and why you think they're coming down?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: We have a lot to celebrate in terms of gun violence coming down because in 2020, it had really spiked during COVID. We're down 74% since 2020 in Brooklyn, as you said, 24% in between this year and last year. For the first time, I can publicly report that we are finally below where we were in 2018 and 2019 in terms of shooting incidents and shooting victims. We're now safer than we were pre-pandemic, and so a lot to be grateful for. There's a lot of reasons why gun violence is going down in the county. There's enforcement strategies that I believe make a lot of sense.

My office has conducted a few takedowns of very violent gang members who were responsible for a number of shootings. There's been a lot of work with community violence intervention. My office has also worked with some programming to take high-risk people and give them jobs and training opportunities, so they're not just hanging out on the streets and getting involved in violence, and technology. We've invested very heavily in technology so that when police do make arrest, and I think it also helps prevent wrongful convictions, we're looking at technology to make sure that we have the right people in custody.

Some of that technology is looking at metadata from people's cell phones and video evidence and social media but really looking at these cases and not just relying on testimonial evidence but looking at other evidence, and of course, DNA and fingerprint evidence. A lot of reasons why, but Brooklyn is figuring out it cannot just be an enforcement protocol that's going to make us safer. We have to listen to the community and get them involved. A lot of work has been done with community members to de-escalate incidents before they lead to shootings.

Brigid Bergin: My colleagues, your Gothamists, have mapped hotspot blocks for gun violence based on police data. Brooklyn contains 7 out of the 10 of those hotspot blocks. How do the number of shootings compare from neighborhood to neighborhood within Brooklyn? When we talk about them being down, are they down across the board, or are there places that need a lot more work?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: Very good question. Of course, there are neighborhoods that need a tremendous amount of investment. As we do the investments, we'll see shootings come down, but typically, it's the neighborhoods that have been hotspots for the last 30 years. It's the same neighborhoods. I grew up in East New York and Brooklyn. The 75 has always been a hotspot. Brownsville, the 73 has been a hotspot. East Flatbush, 67. They're the neighborhoods that repeat.

Some years we have really good years. Like last year, Brownsville saw a real decrease in shooting violence. This year they're up. Last year, the 75 was up, but this year they're down. Often it really is about one or two individuals in that neighborhood who are doing these shootings because once the shootings start, there's a cycle of retribution and retaliation. Our goal, as the DA's office on the prevention side, is to try to prevent those shootings from happening in the first place. If you stop one or two shootings, you may stop four or five retaliations.

That's part of the strategy. These neighborhoods that have seen shooting violence, unfortunately, have seen it for decades. We just need more and more investments into those communities, in particular, investing in a certain age bracket between 15 and 25. If we could just find more resources for that group, we're going to see the shootings continue to fall.

Brigid Bergin: If you're just joining us, I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian. Today, we're speaking with Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. DA, I have to ask you about some of the news from last week. Mayor Eric Adams was federally indicted on bribery and other charges. His alleged crimes go back to 2014 when he was Brooklyn borough president. Again, these are federal charges, but you became the acting district attorney of Brooklyn in October of 2016. To what extent, if any, do those crimes fall under your purview, and is your office conducting any investigations?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: As it relates to what's happening in the city of New York with the mayor and a lot of these investigations, it's important for me as district attorney to continue to focus on the progress that we're making in reducing crime. I'm focusing my efforts on that work. Our partnerships with the community and law enforcement are strong, and I know people are worried that the investigations will prevent agencies such as mine from doing the work. I am confident that I continue to do the work with the police and other people that are involved in enforcement.

I understand everyone's concerns about the allegations revolving the mayor and some of his executive leadership, but as a law enforcement officer, I'm unable to comment on pending criminal matters. We can't talk about what we're investigating and what we're not investigating, but I want the people of this county and really the people of the city of New York to know that I am confident that this office and the police department will continue to do the work to drive down safety. My office will continue to focus on fairness in our criminal legal system as well.

Brigid Bergin: I appreciate that. Just to follow up, there was a Marist College poll that came out this morning that found that 69% of New Yorkers think Mayor Adams should resign. We've heard from many lawmakers calling on him to resign, saying, in short it's going to become too difficult to run the city and mount a defense at the same time. As a New Yorker, do you think he should resign?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: That's a political question. Fortunately for me, as elected DA, I'm supposed to avoid politics. I'm supposed to focus in on the issues of public safety and the criminal legal system. I have, obviously, concerns that the city continue to function in ways that keep our city moving forward, but the elected leaders who have the obligation to make these political decisions, I have confidence that they will take the concerns of New Yorkers at heart. Again, as a law enforcement official, I'm really not supposed to comment on political matters, and so I won't.

Brigid Bergin: We appreciate. We had to ask. Let's go back to some of our callers who are interested in more of the work of this conviction unit that we were talking about. Let's go to Richard in Queens. Richard, thanks for calling WNYC.

Richard: You're welcome. Mr. District Attorney, I'm wondering if the Innocence Project over the years, which has done such great work in overturning wrongful convictions, may have had some influence on you over the years, maybe before or after you got your office as district attorney?

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: Yes. The Innocence Project has been a great partner with my office in trying to figure out how we do this work. When I was asked to set up this unit, we met with folks from the Innocence Project, and we look at DNA. I think what's really special about the Brooklyn DA's unit, there's a number of things that make it very unique. The transparency with the reports. We have an independent review panel. What I do is I allow outside lawyers who sit pro bono to look at these cases and also make a recommendation to me about whether or not they believe the case should be vacated.

I think I'm the only DA in the United States that opens up the process to lawyers who don't work for them. The other part with the Innocence Project is that they've worked with my office on a study to look at wrongful convictions. The thing about Brooklyn's DA's Conviction Review Unit that's different, in many parts of the country, they only look at cases that DNA or forensic evidence will allow them to help make a decision about whether or not someone's wrongfully convicted.

In our office, that is part of it, but we also will do a full reinvestigation even in cases without DNA evidence to reexamine. Today, there's a lot of cases that we can look at that we couldn't look at in the past because we didn't have the technology that we have today. DNA continues to play an important role, but it's not the only thing that we focus in on. Some of the offices in other parts of the country will not take a case unless there's new DNA evidence to examine.

Brigid Bergin: Let's take one more caller. We'll go to Eric in Manhattan. Eric, thanks for calling.

Eric: Hi. Good morning. Thank you, Gonzalez, for talking to us. First thing I want to mention is, it's very unusual for DA to call the system the criminal legal system and not the criminal justice system, so I think that's an innovation right there to recognize the gap between law and justice. The question I wanted to ask is, there are so many settlements and judgments paid out for wrongful convictions in New York City.

I'm sure that your Conviction Unit is strapped for money, and you explained how you separate the people working on that from the people who are prosecuting cases in your office. I wonder if you speculate on whether there could be an economic benefit, leaving aside the importance of the social justice benefit and legal justice benefit, whether there will be an economic benefit to the city if this program had more money and was more aggressive or more focused.

Brigid Bergin: Thanks for the question.

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: We can always-- I have about pending, currently 60 investigations. Each one of these investigations can take anywhere between 10 months and 14 months. If we had more investigators-- I have the 10 lawyers, but I also have three full-time detective investigators who help the lawyers. We could always use more resources. What I do believe, and I think that's part of the question is if we could prevent wrongful convictions from happening, learn the lessons that we're learning from these wrongful convictions, would the city save a lot of money in settlements? I believe the answer is yes. I think there's so much that we could learn.

The office practices have changed over time while I've been to DA because of things that I've learned from wrongful convictions. Today, before the law changed, my office made sure that we would do double-blind lineups because what we learned is that sometimes an officer could signal to a eyewitness who the person was that they thought was the suspect. We wanted to make sure that the detective leading the lineup wasn't involved in knowing who the suspect was.

There are things that we can do that I think will prevent wrongful convictions, will save money. I also think, quite honestly, that the state needs to think about setting up some kind of statutory scheme to help people when they've been released from prison after years or decades of being wrongfully convicted. They come out of the system, they've been incarcerated for years and years, and they have to wait many, many more years until there's a civil settlement. There should probably be some kind of statutory scheme that would at least allow them to set up their lives.

Brigid Bergin: That's all the time we have for today. My guest has been Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. DA, thanks so much for coming on.

Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez: Thank you, Brigid. Just very happy to share the progress that we're making in reducing crime in Brooklyn. I think it's important people hear that. Thank you.

Brigid Bergin: We appreciate that.

 

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