Victory in the Fourth Department

When the Hon. Paul B. Wojtaszek of Erie County Supreme Court vacated our client’s 30-year-old conviction last year, we were confident—maybe overconfident—that was the end of the story. James Pugh had been wrongly convicted of the 1993 murder of a young mother in Tonawanda, New York and served 26 years in prison for the crime he did not commit. After all, Judge Wojtaszek was skeptical of our arguments, solicitous of the prosecutors, and careful to cover all bases in ruling that Jimmy had been denied access to exculpatory evidence and that new DNA results excluding him from the murder scene would have tipped the balance at trial.

Even the victim’s family seemed convinced of Jimmy’s innocence.

But Erie County District Attorney’s office remained obstinate. They appealed Judge Wojtaszek’s thoughtful decision on every imaginable ground, tying up the case in the appeals court for a year while Jimmy’s co-defendant, Scott Lorenz, languished in county Jail. Meanwhile, Jimmy has been out on parole, working hard, staying out of trouble, and waiting for his name to be cleared.

We got one step closer to that yesterday, when the Fourth Department Appellate Division shot down Erie County’s twisted arguments trying to justify a conviction that was unfair by any measure. The appeals court unanimously adopted Judge Wojtaszek’s two grounds for vacating the conviction: all four judges agreed that DNA showed that someone other than Jimmy or his co-defendant or the victim touched the murder weapons (a necktie and a knife) and that so-called Brady material showing that a coin found on the co-defendant did not actually come from the murder scene.

But the appeals court, which reviewed the whole record, went even further, recognizing that the case was riddled with misconduct throughout (read the New York Times stories in the links above to see what I am talking about: the main detective investigating the murder was closely tied to Richard Matt, the notorious serial killer who escaped from Dannemora and, in our view, systematically pressured the trial witnesses to make up stories that would wrongly convict our client). Without prompting by either side, the judges observed that: “Although not a ground for Supreme Court’s granting of the motions, we also note that there was considerable evidence at the hearing that the lead investigator had pressured many witnesses to incriminate and testify against defendants.”

If Erie Count wants to continue on its stubborn struggle to keep the convictions in limbo for a few more months, it has one more procedural arrow in it’s quiver. The prosecutors can seek leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court. That will be denied, most likely quite quickly. Then Erie County can go through the farce of deciding whether to re-try the case. But there won’t be any witnesses for the prosecution, because they have all recanted. DNA conclusively exonerates the defendants. They physical evidence did not actually come from the crime scene, a fact withheld in the first trial. All that remains is inaccurate, contradictory statements from the co-defendant that can’t be used against Jimmy.

This particular American legal nightmare is almost over.