Hooray -- even if I do have an acquaintance in the Bronx office. EXCERPTS A man whose attempted liquidate conviction was overturned after he served a dozen years in prison is planning on filing a lawsuit charging that Queens prosecutors have withheld evidence and misled juries in a broad pattern of misconduct that has led to dozens of wrongful convictions. The suit, which a lawyer expects to file today in federal court in Brooklyn, details 84 instances in which criminal convictions obtained by Queens prosecutors were reversed by higher courts for prosecutorial wrongdoing. The lawsuit says that the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, and his predecessor, John J. Santucci, have not punished prosecutors for their misbehavior. The suit accuses prosecutors in some cases of presenting false testimony by witnesses about their deals for leniency in exchange for cooperation, according to a copy provided by the lawyer filing the suit. It says prosecutors withheld evidence that could be seen as motivating witnesses to give false testimony, and also accuses prosecutors of making false or misleading trial presentations to juries. "These cases are just the tip of the iceberg," said Joel B. Rudin, a Manhattan lawyer filing the suit on behalf of the Queens man. Mr. Rudin won a $5 million settlement in a lawsuit against the Bronx district attorney's office in 2003 involving prosecutorial misconduct. He said that most convictions and plea deals involving prosecutorial misconduct are never uncovered. The plaintiff, Shih-Wei Su, was released from prison in 2003 after a federal appeals court ruled that a Queens prosecutor elicited false testimony against him and misled the jury during his 1992 trial. Mr. Su was 18 when he was convicted in connection with a 1991 shooting in a pool hall in Bayside. He was sentenced to 16 to 50 years in prison. Mr. Su studied law while serving time at the Coxsackie Correctional Facility in upstate New York, but lost the appeal of his conviction and two further appeals before a Legal Aid lawyer, Katheryne M. Martone, was appointed to his case. She gained access to a previously sealed transcript documenting the deal that prosecutors made with a witness. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned the conviction, saying the prosecution's conduct in Mr. Su's trial violated the fundamental tenets of judicial integrity. "A conviction that is obtained through testimony the prosecutor knows to be false is repugnant to the Consbreastution," the appeals court said. 911 Improbabilities GaloreRank Country Circulation 1. Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan) 14,532,68 plus 14 2. Asahi Shimbun (Japan) 12,601,375 3. Sichuan... ... But prosecutors never told the jury about the deal, the appeals court found. The court found that the lead prosecutor, Linda Rosero, had told the jury that "there was technically no agreement" concerning the conditions of the witness's testimony. Ms. Rosero asked the witness in the trial whether he had been promised anything concerning the case against him, and he responded, "Nothing at all." ... Mr. Su said in a phone interview last night that the lawsuit was the culmination of spending nearly half his life proving his innocence and exposing corruption in the legal system. "I was robbed of the best 12 years of my life because of the legal system," said Mr. Su, who works as a financial consultant in Manhattan. "I lived like an animal with no rights," he said. "I was emotionally dead in a never-ending nightmare, and the only thing keeping me alive was that I wanted the world to know they are putting innocent people in jail."
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