Bulletin: Amaury Villalobos and William Vasquez; New York: Outdated arson science: Wrongly convicted partially because of outdated arson science and wrongly imprisoned for almost 33 years until their guilty verdicts were overturned, these 2 wrongly convicted men will receive $31 million... "Although a fire marshal testified at the men’s trial that he had found evidence of arson, Mr. Hale said evolving fire science disproved the 1980 analysis. Reports by experts that were filed by Mr. Villalobos’s lawyer and the district attorney’s office showed that despite the initial testimony, there was no evidence of arson and the fire was most likely an accident." Reporter Alan Feuer; New York Times; March 6, 2017; (Thanks to Wrongful Convictions Blog for bringing this case to our attention);

"City and state officials in New York have agreed to pay two men who were wrongfully convicted of setting a fire in 1980 in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn about $31 million to settle their claims of being unjustly prosecuted. The early-morning blaze caused the death of a woman and her five children. The two men, Amaury Villalobos and William Vasquez, spent almost 33 years in prison on charges of murder and arson before their guilty verdicts were overturned in 2015 in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on the recommendation of the Conviction Review Unit of the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. A third man convicted in the blaze, Raymond Mora, was also cleared by the ruling, but he died in prison in 1989.  According to a statement by Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, who has the power to settle claims, the city will pay Mr. Villalobos and Mr. Vasquez $9.7 million each. Officials in the office of Eric T. Schneiderman, the state attorney general, said the state had agreed to pay each man $5.75 million..........The townhouse’s owner, Hannah Quick, told the police at the time that it had been arson and that she had heard the three defendants inside the townhouse just before the fire and then had seen them walk out. Ms. Quick, a drug dealer, said she had been feuding with one or two of the men over drugs. All of the men were convicted at a trial in 1981. But years later, as she was dying, Ms. Quick told her daughter that she had lied about the men’s involvement in the fire. The case found its way to the Conviction Review Unit, whose leader, Mark J. Hale, said he had no idea how the case had proceeded to trial in the first place. In an interview conducted when the men were exonerated, Mr. Hale said that Ms. Quick’s motives to lie might have included liability for the fire and an insurance payment she received. Although a fire marshal testified at the men’s trial that he had found evidence of arson, Mr. Hale said evolving fire science disproved the 1980 analysis. Reports by experts that were filed by Mr. Villalobos’s lawyer and the district attorney’s office showed that despite the initial testimony, there was no evidence of arson and the fire was most likely an accident. “It’s a significant settlement,” Joel Rudin, Mr. Vasquez’s lawyer, said. “This is a case where the system completely failed these men.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/nyregion/wrongful-conviction-amaury-villalobos-william-vasquez.html?_r=0