dem let jamaican man go

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Brooklyn Man, Imprisoned 24 Years, Is Acquitted on Murder Charge

A Brooklyn jury has acquitted a 58-year-old man who had been imprisoned for 24 years on a murder charge.

The man, Derrick Deacon, had been convicted in the 1989 shooting death of Anthony Wynn during a robbery in a Flatbush apartment complex.

Mr. Deacon was granted a new trial in 2012 after someone cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified a different man as the gunman and after a separate witness recanted.

On Monday, it took a jury just nine minutes to declare Mr. Deacon not guilty.

His lawyer says Mr. Deacon, a Jamaican, is being held by immigration authorities but is expected to be released in about a week.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/nyregion/man-imprisoned-24-years-is-acquitted-on-murder-charge.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1385247893-KET2vkdaYNFl0aiNTsg1+g

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Imprisoned Over 20 Years, Brooklyn Man Gets Retrial

By MOSI SECRET




After spending more than two decades in prison saying he was not guilty of murder, a Brooklyn man won a new trial this week after an appellate court vacated his conviction based on evidence that another man might have committed the crime and that a key trial witness had recanted her testimony.

The ruling followed four years of legal wrangling by the man, Derrick Deacon, 57, who was convicted in 1989 of robbing and shooting to death Anthony Wynn in the hallway of an apartment building in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.

Glenn A. Garber, director of the Exoneration Initiative, a nonprofit group that represents people convicted of crimes who say they are innocent and has handled Mr. Deacon’s case, celebrated the decision. “We’re thrilled. Deacon has suffered a long time,” he said. “We’re hoping that the state is not going to retry him and if they do, we think he is going to get acquitted.”

A spokesman from the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said the office was reviewing the case.

Though Mr. Deacon argued he was elsewhere at the time of the murder, he was convicted based largely on the testimony of a superintendent in the building who said that he had seen Mr. Deacon arguing with the victim moments before the attack. But in 2001, a man named Trevor Brown became a cooperating witness in an unrelated federal investigation of the Patio Crew, a violent Jamaican gang that controlled the neighborhood where the murder happened. In the course of the investigation, Mr. Brown told members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that another member of the Patio Crew, a man known as Pablo, actually killed Mr. Wynn.

Mr. Deacon, serving time in prison in central New York, did not learn about Mr. Brown’s statements until years later when Emile Dixon, the leader of the Patio Crew who was convicted as a result of the federal investigation, noticed a record of Mr. Brown’s statements in his own court file. He sent the document to Mr. Deacon.

“After the murder, people who later became known as the Patio Crew and other people who lived in the area openly acknowledged Fire’s mistaken arrest for the Wynn murder,” Mr. Brown later wrote in an affidavit, referring to Mr. Deacon, who was known as Fire. “However, nobody dared inform the authorities for fear that Pablo’s implication would cause Pablo and people associated with him to take revenge.”

Mr. Deacon filed a motion for his release based on the new evidence, which was rejected by a state supreme court judge after a special hearing.

Among those to testify at that hearing, in June 2009, was Colleen Campbell, a witness at the original trial whom defense lawyers had expected to say that the man she had seen flee the scene of the murder with a gun was not Mr. Deacon but who hedged on the stand and said she could not be sure. At the new hearing, she said she had been pressured by the police or prosecutors to provide “vague” testimony at trial and that the man she saw looked nothing like Mr. Deacon. “I was fearful of the real perpetrator and others who may have been associated with him,” she said in an affidavit filed as part of the motion. “Being noncommittal about Fire seemed to be the safest and easiest approach at the time.”

On Wednesday, the state court of appeals rejected the previous ruling and ordered that Mr. Deacon receive a new trial. “We find that the likely cumulative effect of the newly discovered evidence and the recantation testimony established a reasonable probability that the result of a new trial would be a verdict more favorable to the defendant,” the court wrote in its ruling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/nyregion/in-prison-over-20-years-brooklyn-man-gets-retrial-in-flatbush-murder.html

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Innocent man toasts freedom after 25 years

Derrick Deacon, center, celebrates with his lawyer Rebecca Freedman Wednesday after being released from prison for a crime he didn't commit.

Photo: Chad Rachman

After spending nearly 25 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, a Brooklyn man toasted his new life as a free man on Wednesday.

“I got freedom, freedom!” Derrick Deacon exclaimed as he celebrated with friends and family at Tribeca’s Mudville Saloon, where he tasted his first drink outside prison walls in a quarter-century.

“God gave me a second chance. And when you got it, you got to make use of that.”

Deacon, 58, who gave up smoking and alcohol behind bars, sipped orange juice as he finally dined on something other than prison grub, chowing down on chicken wings and chili.

Deacon recalled how his “knees buckled” when he heard the not-guilty verdict Monday at the new trial he was granted after another man was identified as the real killer.

“I took a deep breath and I was screaming, ‘Oh, God, I’m free!’ ” Deacon said about his long-awaited vindication.

“I was trembling. I was in tears. I couldn’t believe it. I told my lawyer she got to hold me.”

Deacon said the world of cellphones is vastly different from the one he left 24 years ago.

“When I was in the streets, I remember using a phone in the case — you had to pull on the top, big phones,” he said.

“When I see [my lawyer] texting, I was like, ‘What is this?’ I was like, ‘Wow, it’s a different world man.’”

Deacon was imprisoned in 1989 and convicted of gunning down 16-year-old Anthony Wynn during a robbery in a Flatbush apartment building.

He was given a new trial in 2012 after a Jamaican gangbanger was fingered for the crime.

Deacon relaxed at the Manhattan bar with a young man, Jason Bernard, whom he regards as his son, and fantasized about opening a barber shop or writing a book.

“I just want to own my own business,” he said.

The lawyers who worked almost seven years to set him free, joined him for the celebration.

“Derek kept the faith for 25 years,” said defense attorney Glenn Garber, founder of the Exoneration Initiative, a free legal-assistance program. “I think he was fueled by his innocence.”

The joyous scene Wednesday was a far cry from the anguish Deacon felt when he was wrongfully convicted in 1989.

“I went crazy when they said guilty. I couldn’t stand up,” Deacon recalled. “It was a nightmare. Convicted for something I didn’t do. I couldn’t sleep some nights.”

Another reason Deacon got a retrial was the recantation of witness Colleen Campbell, who testified she had seen the murderer fleeing the crime scene

Campbell now claims she knew it wasn’t Deacon, but she’d feared identifying a member of the Jamaican gang.

http://nypost.com/2013/11/21/freed-brooklyn-man-toasts-to-his-new-life/

[kia027]

Campbell now claims she knew it wasn’t Deacon, but she’d feared identifying a member of the Jamaican gang.

will she face perjury charges?

glad he is free

[Gen]

Sometimes it’s the little things that count the most — just ask Derrick Deacon. The Brooklyn man who used to go by the nickname “Fire” spent Thursday — his first full day of freedom after 25 years of wrongful imprisonment – savoring things most of us take for granted, things like “real toothpaste” and a private shower. “I took a shower this morning. Oh man, it felt wonderful. And I soaped myself in that shower, too. When you’re up top [in prison] you’ve got to rush,” Deacon, 58, told The Post. “You’ve got six, seven, 10 people in one shower. You can’t imagine that feeling. Today, I was just relaxing, soaking myself.”



After sleeping in and waking up without an alarm clock at 10 a.m. Deacon brushed his teeth – he enjoyed it so much that he brushed twice.
“In prison they give you a small toothbrush. And if you don’t have money, you’ve got to use the state toothpaste. That toothpaste is yucky,” Deacon said. “I brushed my teeth once and I brushed it again. I could brush every corner of my mouth, not like it was before with those tiny toothbrushes.”


Deacon, who was born in Jamaica, then settled in with a cup of peppermint tea and the same bible that kept him going through a quarter-century behind bars that he didn’t deserve. “Psalms 35, 142, 7. I read those psalms every day in prison. Those psalms keep me going spiritually, mentally keep me focused. Those psalms mean a lot to my soul.”



When Deacon went shopping with his nephew at Caps USA on Flatbush Avenue he noticed how styles have changed since 1989, the year he was sent upstate. “I feel good, but times have changed. I never used to wear these clothes back in the day. I used to wear linen, silk shirts with a zipper in front and elastic in the waist. Snake skin — that’s my favorite. Nobody wears that anymore.”


Deacon closed out his first day of freedom at the Spice’s Jerk restaurant in East Flatbush, where his nephew called in advance to have the chef whip up some Jamaican grub. “Rice and peas, steamed snapper fish, green bananas. I didn’t eat that for — you know how many years I didn’t eat that? I was eating that like I was crazy.”


Deacon was convicted of gunning down Anthony Wynn during a robbery in a Flatbush apartment building. He was given a new trial in 2012 after a Jamaican gangbanger was fingered for the crime and a witness recanted and said she gave vague testimony after cops and prosecutors pressured her to, threatening to take away her kids. Deacon was found not guilty Monday by a jury that took all of 9 minutes to render its verdict. He was temporarily detained on an immigration hold before his release Wednesday.


“It’s such a great relief, after so much time and so much heartache, to have him out here with his family instead of sitting on the phone with him in my office,” said one of his defense attorneys, Rebecca Freedman, of the Exoneration Initiative. “Now I have him here in my office, happy. It’s just a great feeling to have him be vindicated.”


Deacon said he wants to start his own company – maybe a restaurant or beauty parlor, or maybe a company that transports people to upstate prisons so they can visit their incarcerated loved ones. “I’m so glad to be home,” Deacon said. “I never thought a day would come when I’d be talking to news people, where I’d get calls from people on the phone, saying, ‘Oh, you’re on the front page of the New York Post!’”

[Gen]

Shaking with tears, Derrick Deacon reacts in Brooklyn Supreme Court after being acquitted for the 1989 robbery and murder of Anthony Winn.

[Gen]

i don't think so, witness coercion and all that. law enforcement told her that her children may be taken away if she did not testify seh she saw him kill the man.

add to that, the fear that the patio crew might lick her dung if she tell the truth, and it was easy for her to go along with what police want her to seh.

will she face perjury charges?

glad he is free

[kia027]

makes sense. now lets hope this man noh turn fool and try go find her

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will she face perjury charges?

glad he is free

da biggar qwestian iss weddar dem investigatinn fe coercion fe give false testeemonee

[Gen]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/11/prison-for-25-years-man-says-nypd-set-him-up.html

similar case here in brooklyn, but this is a guyanese man. I think the same legal aid group that helped the yard guy working on his case.

this guy get release this year, but him still in custody, this time immigration. him gwine get deported.

bway the 80s was crazy

the number a jamaicans and west indian people dat get ketch up inna all kinda criminal tings

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...et-him-up.html


similar case here in brooklyn, but this is a guyanese man. I think the same legal aid group that helped the yard guy working on his case.

this guy get release this year, but him still in custody, this time immigration. him gwine get deported.

bway the 80s was crazy

the number a jamaicans and west indian people dat get ketch up inna all kinda criminal tings

dem use fe ave jugs dealers pon fulton. wan day mii wass walkinn deer wan crackhead tri fe rob sum wan ann jugs dealers pull out sum knives ann chase imm. dem tell da crackhead doan rob wey dem do dem bizz. ave natt walk ova deer since


latt aff innacent blakks inn jail ann itt a shame