New York Metropolis pays $10.5 million dollars to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by a person who spent 24 years in jail on a homicide conviction that was overturned after a witness who had positioned him on the crime scene recanted, metropolis officers mentioned Thursday.
The conviction of Shawn Williams, who was freed in 2018, was the 14th overturned conviction linked to retired Detective Louis Scarcella, a former Brooklyn murder detective who has been accused of coercing witnesses and framing suspects through the high-crime period of the late Eighties and Nineteen Nineties.
Williams, who's now 47, was convicted in 1994 within the deadly taking pictures of his neighbor Marvin Mason the 12 months earlier than.
Absent any forensic proof tying Williams to the crime, prosecutors relied on the testimony of a lady who mentioned she had seen him on the scene with a gun. The girl recanted her testimony in 2013, saying she had been coerced into naming Williams because the gunman by Scarcella.
The $10.5 million settlement with Williams to settle his lawsuit in opposition to Scarcella and two different officers was first reported in The New York Occasions.
"No amount of cash may give me again the years they took from me," Williams mentioned in a press release to the Occasions. "However I'm going to maintain rebuilding my life and waiting for a brighter future."
A spokesperson for New York Metropolis's legislation division mentioned the settlement was in the perfect curiosity of all events.
The town has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements over different instances linked to Scarcella, who has denied any wrongdoing.
Richard Signorelli, an lawyer for Scarcella, mentioned the retired detective "categorically denies all of the allegations of misconduct" in Williams' case. Signorelli mentioned the settlement settlement "doesn't represent any admission of legal responsibility or wrongdoing on Det. Scarcella's half."