PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This Blog is interested in false confessions because of the disturbing number of exonerations in the USA, Canada and multiple other jurisdictions throughout the world, where, in the absence of incriminating forensic evidence the conviction is based on self-incrimination – and because of the growing body of scientific research showing how vulnerable suspects are to widely used interrogation methods such as the notorious ‘Reid Technique.’" (The National Registry of Exonerations reports that 1n 1917 there was a record number of 29 exonerations based on false confessions);
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog:
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PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "In such motions to dismiss at this stage of a lawsuit, the judge is required to rely on the facts as stated by the plaintiff. Still, Nick Brustin, one of DiPippo's lawyers, called it a "very-reasoned" ruling and said the judge recognized "the scope of the misconduct" that resulted in his client's long imprisonment. "This is a case of misconduct on the scale of Deskovic and (the defendants) need to get their head around that," Brustin said, referring to the case of another client of his, Jeffrey Deskovic, who was exonerated in 2006 for his wrongful conviction in the 1989 rape and murder of a Peekskill High School classmate. Most significantly, in his ruling Thursday, Roman upheld DiPippo's claims that the county could be held liable for the constitutional violations under three theories. The first was that the sheriff's department had an unofficial practice of threatening witnesses with prosecution or subjecting them to "sham" lie-detector tests to obtain false evidence. A second was the county's failure to properly supervise sheriff's deputies as a result of alleged misconduct by investigators. The third was Thoubboron's assignment of Stephens to oversee the murder investigation knowing that he might use unconstitutional methods to pursue a conviction."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "In claiming that Putnam County is liable because of a pattern of violations in its investigative techniques, the lawsuit relies in part on the Deskovic case. Deskovic was coerced into making a false confession after Stephens administered a lie detector test and convinced him he had failed. That was in 1989, five years before Thoubboron put Stephens in charge of the Wright investigation. In 2014, a federal jury found that Stephens had violated Deskovic's constitutional rights. The jury awarded him $40 million although a pre-trial settlement with Putnam County limited the payment to $10 million."
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STORY: "Federal judge refuses to dismiss Anthony DiPippo's lawsuit over wrongful murder conviction," by reporter Jonathan Bandler, published by The Rockland/Westchester Journal News, on March 4, 2019.
GIST: "A
federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against Putnam County by
Anthony DiPippo, who spent 20 years in prison until acquitted after a
third trial in the 1994 rape and murder of 12-year-old Josette Wright. Lawyers
for Putnam County, former Sheriff Robert Thoubboron and former jail
guard Victor Nestor failed to convince U.S. District Judge Nelson Roman
that the three had not violated DiPippo's constitutional rights. Nestor is accused of fabricating evidence by claiming DiPippo made a statement at the jail confessing to the killing. The
lawsuit also names Sheriff's investigators Dan Stephens, Patrick
Castaldo and Bill Quick. Stephens oversaw the investigation and Castaldo
and Quick allegedly used coercive techniques to get witnesses to
implicate DiPippo and his friend Andrew Krivak in the killing. The
lawsuit was filed in 2017. In such motions to dismiss at this stage of a
lawsuit, the judge is required to rely on the facts as stated by the
plaintiff. Still,
Nick Brustin, one of DiPippo's lawyers, called it a "very-reasoned"
ruling and said the judge recognized "the scope of the misconduct" that
resulted in his client's long imprisonment. "This
is a case of misconduct on the scale of Deskovic and (the defendants)
need to get their head around that," Brustin said, referring to the case
of another client of his, Jeffrey Deskovic, who was exonerated in 2006
for his wrongful conviction in the 1989 rape and murder of a Peekskill
High School classmate. Most
significantly, in his ruling Thursday, Roman upheld DiPippo's claims
that the county could be held liable for the constitutional violations
under three theories. The first was that
the sheriff's department had an unofficial practice of threatening
witnesses with prosecution or subjecting them to "sham" lie-detector
tests to obtain false evidence. A second was the county's failure to properly supervise sheriff's deputies as a result of alleged misconduct by investigators. The
third was Thoubboron's assignment of Stephens to oversee the murder
investigation knowing that he might use unconstitutional methods to
pursue a conviction. James Randazzo, a lawyer for Putnam County and the former investigators, declined to comment on the decision. DiPippo
and Krivak were convicted of second-degree murder in separate trials in
1997 and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Key testimony came
from a former girlfriend of DiPippo's, Denise Rose, who claimed she was
present in a van when DiPippo and Krivak raped Josette. She claimed the
girl was suffocated and that the two men then dumped her body. But DiPippo has long argued that Rose was among the witnesses Castaldo and Quick coerced into implicating him and Krivak. A pattern claim in Putnam: In
claiming that Putnam County is liable because of a pattern of
violations in its investigative techniques, the lawsuit relies in part
on the Deskovic case. Deskovic was coerced into
making a false confession after Stephens administered a lie detector
test and convinced him he had failed. That was in
1989, five years before Thoubboron put Stephens in charge of the Wright
investigation. In 2014, a federal jury found that Stephens had violated
Deskovic's constitutional rights. The jury awarded him $40 million
although a pre-trial settlement with Putnam County limited the payment
to $10 million. Among
their arguments, defense lawyers argued that Putnam County and its
former sheriff could not be liable in the DiPippo case because there was
no pattern of violations they were aware of and the Deskovic verdict
came out decades after the investigation into Wright's murder. Thoubboron,
who ran the Sheriff's Department from 1986 to 2001, is sued for
supervisor liability, although defense lawyers contend he had no direct
role in the investigation. Roman agreed with
DiPippo's lawyers that even if Thoubboron had not been present during
the various interrogations, the high-profile case was "on his radar" and
he was eager to have it solved before he was up for re-election. Roman
relied in part on a witness' sworn statement in 1997 recanting his
claim that DiPippo had confessed to the killing and accusing the
investigators of coercive investigative techniques. The
recantation, while Thoubboron was still sheriff, "makes it more than
plausible that Thouborron either received a report reflecting the
violations and failed to remedy the wrong or exhibited deliberate
indifference by failing to act on information indicating that
unconstitutional acts were occurring," Roman wrote. The
judge did dismiss some of the claims in DiPippo's lawsuit. He agreed
with the defense that Putnam County cannot be held liable for the
intentional infliction of emotional distress. He also dismissed a
failure to investigate claim as a violation of due process because there
is no constitutional right to an adequate investigation. He
dismissed failure to intervene claims alleging that the defendants
failed to cure civil rights violations because the lawsuit lacked
specificity as to what each defendant should have done. The judge
suggested that DiPippo's lawyers could resurrect that claim once they
get more information from the county through discovery. Three trials: DiPippo
was freed in 2010 after an appellate court ruled that his original
trial lawyer had a conflict of interest because he had previously
represented Howard Gombert, a Connecticut sex offender who DiPippo
contends was Wright's killer. He was convicted
again in 2011 but that verdict was also thrown out because a judge did
not permit DiPippo to present evidence implicating Gombert. When that
evidence was offered in DiPippo's third trial in 2016, he was acquitted. Krivak,
who gave a confession he has long contended was coerced and false after
Stephens gave him a lie detector test, has never gotten a second trial
and remains in prison. But last month an appellate panel ordered a
hearing over the same evidence that won DiPippo his freedom, reversing a
judge's ruling that no hearing was necessary because the new evidence
was unlikely to have resulted in a different verdict. The hearing is
expected in April.""
The entire story can be found at:
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/putnam/2019/03/04/judge-allows-anthony-dipippo-wrongful-conviction-lawsuit-josette-wright/3051093002/
Read the National Registry of Exonerations entry by Maurice Possley at the link below:
"In November 1995, a hunter found the remains of 12-year-old Josette
Wright in a wooded area of Putnam County, New York. Her mother had
reported her missing on October 4, 1994, after she failed to return home
the night before.
Detectives investigating the murder arrested a teenager named Dominic Neglia on unrelated drug charges. During questioning, detectives claimed that Neglia said a friend of his—18-year-old Anthony DiPippo—and several others were involved in the rape and murder of Wright.
Neglia, who later recanted his statement, implicated DiPippo, Andrew Krivak, Adam Wilson, Bill McGregor and DiPippo’s then-girlfriend, Denise Rose, in the crime.
In July 1996, DiPippo and Krivak were arrested on charges of murder and rape. They were convicted in separate trials in Putnam County Supreme Court in 1997, based largely on the testimony of Wilson, McGregor and Rose. They testified that they were in DiPippo’s van when Krivak and DiPippo picked up Wright, ostensibly to give her a ride, and instead raped and strangled her and then took her into a wooded area. Rose testified that they tied Wright’s hands in front of her.
DiPippo testified and denied any involvement in the crime.
On July 11, 1997, the jury convicted DiPippo of second-degree murder and rape and he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Krivak was also sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Krivak’s conviction was upheld on appeal, but the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court vacated DiPippo’s conviction and ordered a new trial in 2011. The court held that DiPippo’s trial lawyer was ineffective because prior to DiPippo’s trial, he represented Howard Gombert on a rape charge. Gombert, according to evidence presented at an evidentiary hearing, was a suspect in Wright’s murder.
The attorney had been provided reports prior to DiPippo’s trial showing that a witness reported seeing Wright get into a car, driven by Gombert, at 4 p.m. on the day she was last seen. Police had dismantled the car, which belonged to Gombert’s girlfriend, but found no evidence that linked Gombert to the crime.
The appeals court noted that not only did DiPippo’s lawyer fail to reveal that he had previously represented Gombert in an unrelated criminal case, but the lawyer made no attempt to present any evidence pointing to Gombert as the real killer. The appeals court noted that the lawyer “did not conduct even a minimal investigation into Gombert.”
DiPippo went to trial a second time in the spring of 2012. Wilson and McGregor—DiPippo’s friends—recanted the testimony they gave at the first trial that they were present in the van when Krivak and DiPippo raped and killed Wright. McGregor and Wilson said detectives threatened to charge them with the murder if they did not implicate Krivak and DiPippo.
Rose again testified that she was present in the van and that DiPippo and Krivak raped and killed Wright.
The state’s forensic expert testified that Wright had been hog-tied with the rope – her hands and feet were bound together behind her back. The expert said that the skeleton was found face down and that when the flesh and organs deteriorated, the bones collapsed. Because of this, her hands appeared to be in front of her, when actually they were behind her. The expert said that the victim’s underwear was found near the head in a position that suggested the underwear had been shoved down her throat.
The defense argued that the forensic expert’s testimony contradicted Rose’s claim that Wright’s hands were tied in front of her body and suggested that police fed her that detail during her interrogation.
The defense sought to present testimony from Joseph Santoro, but the judge did not allow it. Santoro was incarcerated in Connecticut with Gombert, who was serving a sentence for rape. Santoro had provided a sworn affidavit saying that in April 2011, Gombert admitted that Putnam County police were “trying to get him for the killing of two girls” in Putnam County. One of the girls was Wright, but Gombert wasn’t worried about that case because “they already convicted some other suckers” for that crime.
Santoro said in his affidavit that Gombert told him that he had met Wright at his former girlfriend's house and was attracted to her. According to Santoro, Gombert said that the only way he could get Wright into his car was to ask her to babysit for his daughter. After that, Gombert said he had sex with her, but he had to “persuade her” because she did not want to have sex with him. Santoro also said Gombert made statements regarding a second missing girl, whose body he claimed would never be found. Santoro said he interpreted Gombert’s statements as boasts that Gombert had killed both girls. The defense also was barred from calling several women who were prepared to testify that they had been sexually molested by Gombert, and that he had tied them up and stuffed clothing in their mouths. One of the witnesses was the victim in the case that led to Gombert’s imprisonment in Connecticut.
On May 9, 2012, DiPippo was again convicted of second-degree murder and rape. Once more, he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
In March 2016, the New York Court of Appeals reversed DiPippo’s convictions and ordered a new trial. The court ruled that the defense should have been allowed to present Santoro’s testimony about Gombert’s admissions as well as testimony from the women who said Gombert sexually assaulted them in a fashion similar to the attack on Wright.
DiPippo, represented by attorneys Mark Baker and Marc Agnifilo, went to trial a third time in September 2016. Rose again testified that she was present in the van when Krivak and DiPippo raped and killed Wright.
In addition to Santoro, the defense presented several other new witnesses:
Gennaro DeSimone, a mechanic who had performed work on cars owned by Krivak’s father, testified that at the time of the crime, the van that Rose said was the scene of the crime was in fact parked at Krivak’s house with flat tires, no license plates, and was not operable.
Allyson Clokey testified that she saw Wright at the Danbury Mall on October 7, 1994—four days after Rose said the crime occurred. Lorraine McLoughlin, who had been one of Wright’s teachers, testified that she saw Wright on the Poughkeepsie mall on October 8—five days after Rose said the crime occurred.
The defense also presented evidence that during an interview with law enforcement prior to the third trial, Rose admitted she said the crime occurred on October 3 because the detective who was interrogating her told her that was the day that Wright was reported missing. In attacking Rose’s testimony, the defense noted that Rose also admitted that she had smoked crack cocaine more than 10,000 times and that she maintained an intimate relationship with DiPippo for several months after the murder.
Santoro testified about Gombert’s admissions to having killed Wright and another girl. Two women testified that Gombert raped them—one of whom was seven years old at the time.
Dominick Neglia, the youth who had initially implicated DiPippo and Krivak, recanted that statement, saying that at the time he was 16 years old and had never been arrested before. He said detectives repeatedly showed up at his school and his job and threatened him with prosecution for drug crimes. Neglia said, “I started with a small story and dug myself a grave.” He said that he thought if he told a big enough lie, the detectives would realize it was false and leave him alone.
On October 11, 2016, the jury acquitted DiPippo and he was released. After the verdict was announced, DiPippo embraced Jeffrey Deskovic, who DiPippo had sought out for support. Deskovic was wrongly convicted in 1990 of the rape and murder of a classmate when he was 17 years old. Deskovic had been coerced to falsely confess by Daniel Stephens, a Putnam County Sheriff's investigator who also was involved in the investigation of DiPippo. After Deskovic was exonerated in 2006, he founded The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which fights wrongful convictions and assists the exonerated.
In August 2016, a few months before DiPippo’s acquittal, a legal team headed by Adele Bernhard, who oversees the Post-Conviction Innocence Clinic at New York Law School), filed a petition on behalf of Krivak seeking a new trial. The petition cited the evidence of Gombert’s involvement in the crime. The petition also cited Stephens, who administered a polygraph examination to Krivak and falsely told Krivak he had failed and that he should confess. Krivak claimed that his confession was false and coerced. The motion was denied in December 2016.
Stephens, the petition noted, was involved in similar scenario in 1990—five years earlier—when he interrogated Deskovic. After Stephens questioned him for hours and told him that he had failed the polygraph, Deskovic falsely confessed to killing his classmate. Deskovic was exonerated by DNA testing. In 2014, a federal court jury found that Stephens had fabricated evidence and coerced Deskovic’s false confession.
In October 2017, DiPippo filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking compensation."
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
