The Hynes Legacy Grows: Roger Logan Exonerated

Today, Roger Logan, was freed by a Brooklyn court after he served nearly 17 years for a 1997 murder. Det. Louis Scarcella produced the key eyewitness who fingered Logan for the crime. The only problem? The witness was in police custody at the time she testified she saw Logan at the crime scene. Congratulations to Logan, whose release prompts the inevitable question: how many more wrongly convicted are still sitting in prison, victims of corrupt police work and complicit prosecutors?

Charles Hynes's tenure as Brooklyn D.A. was brought to an end, in no small part, by the ongoing discovery of a growing number of innocent men who lost years upon years of their lives to undeserved prison terms. Whether these wrongful convictions were brought about by prosecutorial misconduct (see, generally, the Jabbar Collins case), or by morally corrupt cops like Lou Scarcella (i.e., David Ranta), to whose malfeasance Hynes's office turned a blind eye, it is evident that something was very rotten in Kings County.

Recently, wrongfully convicted Jabbar Collins won a motion to compel Scarcella's deposition in his civil case, even though Scarcella was not involved in his conviction. The anticipated subject matter will be the Brooklyn D.A.'s apparent policy of looking the other way when confronted with evidence that the investigators were withholding Brady material, fabricating evidence, or otherwise shoehorning defendants into convictions. 

A tip of the hat to incoming D.A. Ken Thompson for his willingness to dig in and investigate, and to acknowledge error where it is found. In the face of all this rot and mold, the only cure is unrelenting sunlight.