From the Daily News:An innocent Georgia man spent 17 months on Rikers Island on robbery charges before a sharp-eyed detective noticed he was the victim of mismatched fingerprints, the Daily News has learned.
Dwight Gomas, whose life was almost destroyed by the snafu, walked away with a $145,000 settlement - and some lasting scars.
Gomas was headed to trial for a Queens jewelry store stickup when a veteran detective routinely checked his identification.
"When I looked at it, I said, 'You know what? This is a screwup; this is not his fingerprints,'" said Detective Daniel Perruzza, according to a court transcript.
"It looks similar, but 'similar' doesn't cut it in prints. It has to be an exact match," Perruzza said.
6 comments:
How did the DA mess up? The NYPD messed up.
The DA saw the evidence that the fingerprints don't match and decided to prosecute anyway.
Where does it say that the DA had evidence that the prints didn't match? ADAs are not fingerprint reading experts. The NYPD detectives and reports said the fingerprints matched. You know not of what you speak.
"He was 880 miles away, living in Atlanta, when armed thugs robbed Theresa's Gold Lynch jewelry store in Howard Beach in October 2003."
This must have been a really hard thing to verify before pressing forward with prosecution.
It was a partial print, not even a full print. You'd think due diligence would have been used by the DA before turning this guy's life into a living hell.
Sorry, I saw in the paper this week that Brown was "called to the scene" of a dead body that was found, so I assumed he was involved with all aspects of the investigation. Kind of funny if you ask me.
And what was his attorney doing this whole time?
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