A New York judge abruptly, and permanently, dismissed over a dozen charges against a former NYPD detective, who was accused of fabricating evidence in criminal cases, after prosecutors admitted that they had repeatedly failed to turn over evidence to the defendant's lawyer before trial.

The prosecutors, who worked for the Manhattan district attorney's Police Accountability Unit, apparently told the court that the failure to turn over evidence was the result of "gross negligence," rather than intentional misconduct. Either way, the judge dismissed the charges "with prejudice," meaning the prosecutor cannot bring those same charges again.

Because of the statute of limitations, it may not be possible to bring any more charges against the defendant.

The case's lead prosecutor was fired.

Edit to add: It appears that the lead prosecutor was removed from her role as deputy director of the Manhattan DA's Public Accountability Unit, but that she remains an employee of the DA's office. Speculating, it may require a lot of procedure to outright fire a public employee in New York, so they may still be going through the procedural requirements to do so.

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No way that wasn't done in order to let the dirty cop off the hook; the DA wants to be able to claim to the public that they brought charges, but not piss off the cops.

That really sucks, if he was actually guilty...

Thats a very dangerous situation, not only does he get off scott free, the people that were possibly framed get no justice, and any future issues could cause more people to lose their freedom.

Prosecuter should be fired, probably end up being a shitty public defender, defending framed people... bad, bad, bad....

I rarely entertain conspiracy theories, especially when incompetence is a valid alternative. But given this conduct, I'm reserving judgment.

Edit: On second thought, I'm changing my view a bit. It's possible that someone in the DA's office botched this on purpose, but I think it's extremely unlikely that the senior prosecutors on the case, or in the DA's office, were involved. I've explained why in another comment, so you can downvote that one.

Disbar them all! Then charge them as accessories after the fact!

How much you wanna bet that they purposefully held the evidence back in order to get this judgment to protect the corrupt cop? The fired attorney is just going to go to a law firm for more money.

Fortunately, according to the New York Post, over 100 convictions based on the detective's work or testimony have been vacated (https://nypost.com/2023/01/31/manhattan-da-abruptly-drops-case-against-crooked-cop-joseph-franco/amp/).

Still, this failure denies a lot of people justice. And it will embolden supporters of abusive police to claim that public accountability efforts are just an anti-cop witch hunt.

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Once again highlighting that shitty prosecutors are just as much of a problem as shitty cops.

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Did y'all even read the story? They intentionally withheld this evidence because it would have helped the defense.

>Some of the withheld evidence included videos from surveillance footage, memos from investigators, communications between prosecutors and cellphones from people arrested after Mr. Franco identified them as drug dealers, Mr. Tanner said in an interview. He described the evidence as “potentially exculpatory.”

>Mr. Tanner said that prosecutors in court blamed their failure to turn over evidence on “gross negligence,” but said that he did not trust that their actions had not been willful.

They did it to win the case, not lose. And when they got caught, they said "oops, it was an accident".

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It's probably a good policy, with the caveat that a lot of people have learned to feign incompetence in an attempt to exploit that kind of reasonable position.

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Probably salivating at the prospect of having to disband the "Police Accountability Unit", too.

I know what you mean.

People should watch We Own This City on HBO. It's a 6 part series about Baltimore's police department's recent corruption scandal. Where an entire unit was acting like a gang selling drugs, robbing from citizens, beating up innocent people and planting evidence. It's concerning how the system was designed to cover it all up, from the rank and file to the union, top brass, and oversight department.

You’d be surprised how many inept people are in important positions due to political connections. One of the DA’s in our area is maybe the worst attorney in the whole district but she was just hired as a DA because of who her husband is.

I could totally see her fucking up a case like this. Nothing political other than her having a job she has no business having, which is probably the case here.

I work in court

Not a chance. She's been publicly fired for repeat ethical violations that tanked a major case. She'll be lucky if she can salvage a law career at all, let alone recoup the millions less in lifetime earnings. No one is paying her off with that kind of money for one shitty cop.

>The case's lead prosecutor was fired.

Fired from the case, but the story doesn't necessarily indicate she was fired from the DA's office.

>The agency immediately removed the prosecutor handling the case, Stephanie Minogue, from her position as the deputy chief of its Police Accountability Unit, which reports directly to the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.

DAs need cops in order to get re-elected. Can’t get convictions without arrests. To think that a DA or their office will ever truly hold cops accountable is a fairy tale.

Hanlon's Razor is being weaponized.

Nonsense conspiracy theory. Her law career is fucked. Think about how much she's just lost in lifetime earnings from this very public firing. No one is paying that kind of money to get one shitty cop off the hook.

edit:

Did y'all even read the story? They intentionally withheld this evidence because it would have helped the defense.

>Some of the withheld evidence included videos from surveillance footage, memos from investigators, communications between prosecutors and cellphones from people arrested after Mr. Franco identified them as drug dealers, Mr. Tanner said in an interview. He described the evidence as “potentially exculpatory.”

>Mr. Tanner said that prosecutors in court blamed their failure to turn over evidence on “gross negligence,” but said that he did not trust that their actions had not been willful.

They did it to win the case, not lose. And when they got caught, they said "oops, it was an accident".

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No reputable law firm is going to take on someone who was publicly fired after being named by the New York Times as grossly botching a crucial case and letting a serious (alleged) criminal off scot-free.

Plus, she may well have major problems with the bar.

> No one is paying that kind of money to get one shitty cop off the hook.

How many shitty cops would threaten murder if she didn't fuck the case up though?

How many people would threaten to kill her for letting him walk?

Is her husband a cop by chance? I want to say you’re in my district but I’m sure this happens everywhere

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This sub takes healthy skepticism about law enforcement and feeds it through a fever dream, this is actually pretty mild by contrast. As you say though, this is the end of more than one career, done in a way that was always going to become public. If you were going to tank a case, this is not the way a sane person would do it.

But good luck trying to tell that to people here.

He was definitely guilty. Still, he deserves a fair trial, and he didn't get one.

Not to mention that all the people convicted with the cop's fake evidence now have no way to pursue exoneration and expungement.

A threat from this guy or one of his criminal associates (by which I mean "fellow cops") is a lot more credible than the words of a few angry redditors.

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So now your conspiracy theory is that cops threatened an ADA and forced her to end her career, and instead of reporting those threats and making her career, she submitted. Now everyone involved is sworn to eternal silence, despite public pressure.

It's so simple, how could no one else have thought of this!

95% of trials are plea deals. The system would literally fall apart if everyone took it to trial. So yeah, they totally need cops to operate — and they know that perjury among cops is relatively high

This is not how you tank a case on purpose.

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Why don’t we have department of Justice investigate cops. So dumb

You'll have a tough time convincing me that these repeated failures by career prosecutors were simply negligence, but I welcome you to try to make your case, rather than simply making an assertion.

Did I wander into a Night Court disguised as real life?

If you want to look at who deliberately tanked that case you just ask who assigned it to somebody clearly incompetent to run it? Every organization has disposable stooges to throw away when the shit hit the fan. Somebody that you can reliably count on the fuck up even the smallest task. You want a project to die, put that guy in charge.

Incompetence is a valid alternative on small, individual events. The lady doing your burger most likely didn't forget the pickle in it out of spite.

When there's multiple avenues of verification, control and authorization, it's a different story. Even without that specific DA, the evidence could have been turned over, things could have gone over her head or she could have been ordered to... Instead every single step after they pretended they were going to hold the cop accountable was specifically geared towards letting him walk.

The cop had two defense teams and a defense judge. There was no justice in those halls.

This is false. Expungement does not require that the detective be convicted.

Her boss who assigned her the case on the other hand...

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Oh no I don't claim it is. You want to ask other questions. Why was somebody clearly incompetent assigned to this case? Who did that? That's the real fix here.

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The money or a body bag. It’s not that fine a line.

I’d say there is more to this than “I just forgot to send it”.

It's absolutely comical levels of "incompetence." I don't buy it.

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I bet whoever assigned the case expected her to fuck up, and lose. Just probably not to that level.

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Who said anything about angry redditors? At least 320 people were convicted on cases he was involved in. That's a long list of people with motive.

We wish this is how our justice system worked. But it ain’t and this is how they will continue to win (not lose, in this situation).

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Did you even read the story? They intentionally withheld this evidence because it would have helped the defense.

>Some of the withheld evidence included videos from surveillance footage, memos from investigators, communications between prosecutors and cellphones from people arrested after Mr. Franco identified them as drug dealers, Mr. Tanner said in an interview. He described the evidence as “potentially exculpatory.”

>Mr. Tanner said that prosecutors in court blamed their failure to turn over evidence on “gross negligence,” but said that he did not trust that their actions had not been willful.

They did it to win the case, not lose. And when they got caught, they said "oops, it was an accident".

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Usually the 10th amendment.

I'm not sure where you're getting that. A single prosecutor could easily be responsible for making sure documents get to opposing counsel. I doubt the DA or his deputy are regularly asking each prosecutor if they remembered to follow their basic obligation to send over evidence.

So your theory is that prosecutors intentionally withheld evidence that would have helped the defense win the case but the double secret plan was actually to get caught doing that in order to help the defense win the case?

It wasn’t incompetence. It was corruption.

Just corruption to convict him not exonerate him.

You can much more subtly tank a case than this if that was the goal.

Sure wouldn't have hurt, though.

They do, when they violate federal laws.

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She followed orders.

Her boss was the same guy who tanked the case against Trump.

> Once again highlighting that shitty prosecutors are just as much of a problem as shitty cops.

I'll go one step further and say we wouldn't have nearly as much of a shitty cop problem if we dealt with our shitty prosecutor problem. Shitty prosecutors are what enable bad cops, they let them get away with bad actions, they accept bad evidence and compel bad testimony, and they often give the bad cops their marching orders. Bad prosecutors are the reason bad cops feel like they can sleep guilt free at night and there will be no consequences for their actions.

Start by checking the re-assigned attorney's and her family's financial records.

Not everything’s a conspiracy theory man. Yes, it fits the narrative better if the fix was in, but that’s highly unlikely to be what actually took place.

Not saying stuff like this doesn’t happen, but I almost 100% guarantee you nobody cares about this detective in the DAs office. Certainly not enough to throw one of their own peoples career away over it.

That sounds important. Any other ways?

Someone in the prosecutor’s office was threatened or paid to throw the case, maybe both.

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There is some serious irony in a corrupt cop case being screwed up because the prosecutor was corrupt.

In the case of New York cops I’d never be surprised. Remember when one cop decided to report his fellow officers numerous criminal dealings, and they had him committed to a mental hospital?

This is New York, not Juarez. "Plata o plomo" is a little far-fetched.

This is what corruption looks like…

>Some of the withheld evidence included videos from surveillance footage, memos from investigators, communications between prosecutors and cellphones from people arrested after Mr. Franco identified them as drug dealers, Mr. Tanner said in an interview. He described the evidence as “potentially exculpatory.”

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From the actual article. You know. The one you posted.