Judge to Review Files on NYPD Detective Scarcella

NyTimes

A State Supreme Court justice ordered the Brooklyn district attorney’s office on Wednesday to produce any documents regarding wrongdoing alleged by inmates, witnesses, lawyers and others against a former homicide detective who is the subject of a wide-ranging review.

The justice, Desmond A. Green, will examine prosecutors’ paperwork regarding Louis Scarcella, a former Brooklyn homicide detective who was blamed for putting an innocent man in prison for 23 years. It will be the first time anyone outside the district attorney’s office has had the opportunity to examine the files.

The district attorney’s office had tried to quash a subpoena request for the files, saying revealing such information would be damaging to a continuing investigation.

Shabaka Shakur, an inmate serving a life term for a 1988 murder, requested the documents in a quest to prove that the detective did shoddy work on his case. Mr. Shakur accused the detective of fabricating an incriminating statement, which the detective said he elicited during an interrogation.

Mr. Shakur has long argued that the detective was notorious for dubious investigative techniques, such as using the same witness in several unrelated murder cases. In March, when prosecutors released a man, David Ranta, who had served 23 years on a murder conviction, they cited problems with the detective’s work as the reason.

The district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, later agreed to review all of the detective’s trial convictions. But Mr. Hynes, who recently lost his re-election bid, has declined to identify the cases under review or share any information about the investigation.