A Brooklyn man who spent a quarter of a century behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit has filed a $25 million lawsuit against the state.
Derrick Deacon was convicted in the 1989 shooting death of teenager during a robbery in a Flatbush apartment complex.
He was freed on new evidence last year.
The 58-year-old was granted a new trial in 2012 after an FBI cooperator identified a different man as the shooter and the recantation of a separate witness.
It took a jury just nine minutes to declare Deacon not guilty.
Deacon told the New York Post that prosecutors “have to pay for every day it made me suffer behind the wall for no reason.”
A spokeswoman for the state attorney declined to comment on the lawsuit.
(AP)
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2 Responses
This is very important and I hope he wins. Prosecuters have to have something to be afraid of ‘in case’ they just might be wrong.
It would be reasonable for states to automatically compensate anyone wrongfully convicted, perhaps tying the rate to their pre-conviction income, or perhaps to what prison guards earn (including pension rights). A state needs to consent to be sued, so they could offer a fair package to avoid wasting time on lawsuits (and the victim in this case would probably prefer to get on with the rest of his life rather than spend years waiting for a lawsuit to be resolved).