Prosecutors Wrongfully Convicted Three Men Who Spent 24 Years Behind Bars. Will They Be Disbarred?

[Nevilledog]

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George Joseph
@georgejoseph94
NEW: These two prosecutors resigned after a Queens judge found they wrongfully sent 3 Black men to prison for 20+ years.

Now a new group is going after their law licenses + those of 19 other current/former Queens prosecutors with histories of misconduct:
Rohan Bolt, George Bell, and Gary Johnson walking out of prison
Prosecutors Wrongfully Convicted Three Men Who Spent 24 Years Behind Bars. Will They Be Disbarred?
A group is filing complaints against current and former Queens prosecutors who have been criticized by judges for misconduct.
gothamist.com
5:19 AM · May 6, 2021

https://gothamist.com/news/prosecutors-wrongfully-convicted-three-men-who-spent-24-years-behind-bars-will-they-be-disbarred

In March, a Queens judge freed three men—George Bell, Gary Johnson, and Rohan Bolt—from prison after they served 24 years for the 1996 murders of a check-cashing store owner and an off-duty police officer in East Elmhurst. Judge Joseph Zayas found the trio had been wrongfully convicted because Queens prosecutors made false statements at trial and failed to turn over critical evidence pointing to alternative suspects in the high-profile case.

In the wake of the judge’s blistering ruling, the trial prosecutors on the case, Charles Testagrossa and Brad Leventhal, resigned from their high-ranking positions in the Nassau County and Queens District Attorney’s Offices. But their fall from grace in the legal world may not be over.

A new group called Accountability NY has filed professional complaints against Testagrossa, Leventhal, and nineteen other current and former Queens prosecutors who have been criticized by judges for misconduct in the past. Some of the group’s complaints, like those against Testagrossa and Leventhal, seek disbarment. Others recommend suspensions.

“A law license is a privilege,” said Cynthia Godsoe, a professor at Brooklyn Law School and member of Accountability NY. “We can't have prosecutors who commit egregious and often repeated misconduct. It's too dangerous for clients and it also undermines lawyers as a whole, and the rule of law.”

*snip*

[chowder66]

1. They should be disbarred and sent to prison for 24 years x 3. nt

[gratuitous]

2. Every Prosecuting Attorney who values justice should support this

This misconduct hurts the profession and the rule of law, but if that's not enough for a prosecutor, how about that the actual killers of the store owner and the off-duty police officer were never brought to the dock to answer for their crimes? Are three wrongful convictions preferable to letting the actual killers go free?

[secondwind]

5. THIS right here.

These “mistakes” not only punish innocent people and ruin their lives, they also don’t allow police to hunt down the real perpetrators.

[JohnSJ]

3. If the prosecutors knowingly made false statements and other knowingly false misrepresentations

disbarrment should be the very least of what they deserve. They should be doing hard time and also paying damages to the victims

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R

[TreasonousBastard]

6. In NY, it's the courts that pull law licenses. Think maybe our higher courts may notice...

what a judge says about this?