A wrongfully convicted New Yorker who was freed after spending 22 years in prison for a double murder he didn’t commit has sued the city of New York and various law enforcement authorities.
The lawsuit was filed Friday on Calvin Buari’s behalf in Manhattan federal court. It seeks unspecified damages.
A law department spokesman said the city will review the lawsuit.
Prosecutors dropped charges in March after new witnesses came forward, leading to the overturning of Buari’s conviction.
Buari was freed in May 2017 after the witnesses said he was not the man who shot two men in a parked car on a Bronx corner in 1992.
Buari was serving a sentence of 50 years to life.
The lawsuit said police targeted Buari without probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
(AP)
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4 Responses
So it took nearly 22 years for the three new witnesses to find out that the wrong man was convicted? Other sites describe one of the witnesses. The witness states that she was in the act of borrowing a light from Buari when the shots (just aside the apartment building) were fired. They ran. When she returned she saw Buari in the crowd gathered around the scene and returned his light. So this means that for at least one witness Buari himself knew who she was and where she was. (She claims she did not find out about him being convicted until nearly 22 years later). So what steps did Buari and/or his lawyer take to locate this person (as it is obvious from her claim that she did not know anything about him being convicted until 2017, then they never contacted her).
So in my previous post the first witness was just an alibi. I should add what others sites state about the other two witnesses. Allegedly the other two witnesses claim that they saw the murder take place and recognized the shooter as someone they had seen many times before in the neighbourhood. And then they quickly moved out. And they did not find out about the wrongful conviction until nearly 22 years later. And this alleged murderer that they allegedly saw was one (of many) witnesses who had testified seeing Buari commit the murder.
he looks guilty to me.
There was certainly reason to suspect him, and probable cause to try him. Indeed there was enough evidence to convince a jury of his guilt beyond reasonable doubt; two witnesses claimed to have seen him shoot the victims, and nobody came forward to say otherwise.
The three witnesses who now exonerated him kept their mouths shut then; they say because they were afraid, but who knows? Maybe the original witnesses (including the person who is now thought to have been the shooter) were really telling the truth and the new ones are lying. This certainly creates reasonable doubt, so it’s right that he was released, but it does not prove his innocence.