46 Convictions Thrown Out After Detective Lies Under Oath

NEW YORK — A New York court set aside 46 convictions in cases that featured testimony from a former Police Department detective who had perjured himself, the Queens district attorney announced Thursday.

The district attorney, Melinda Katz, asked the Queens Criminal Court to throw out the convictions after the detective, James Donovan, pleaded guilty to perjury in May 2023, Katz said in a statement.

Donovan’s plea led to a review of his previous cases by the district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which identified 46 convictions where Donovan was the primary witness. The cases were all misdemeanors, according to the district attorney’s office, with charges ranging from disorderly conduct and trespassing to three-card monte.

“We cannot stand behind a conviction where the essential witness was a law enforcement officer convicted of a crime that irreparably impaired his credibility,” Katz said in the statement. “I believe it is necessary to take this step to protect the public’s confidence in the justice system.”

Since the district attorney’s office created the Conviction Integrity Unit in 2020, 148 convictions have been set aside, including the 46 announced Thursday, Katz said.

On Aug. 11, 2021, Donovan testified before a Queens grand jury about an arrest he said he made the previous November, when he said he found a suspect sleeping in the back seat of a car. Donovan said that he opened the car door, pulled the man out and handcuffed him. Where the man’s head had been lying in the back seat, Donovan said, he saw a white and pink gun.

After the grand jury voted to indict the man, Donovan informed the assistant district attorney that he “had not testified accurately,” according to court documents. It was in fact another detective who had arrested the man, and Donovan was not present for the interaction, the documents said.

The grand jury charges of criminal weapons possession were dismissed as a result. Donovan pleaded guilty to perjury and retired from the Police Department in May 2023.

Once the Conviction Integrity Unit identified the 46 cases, the unit got in touch with the Legal Aid Society’s Wrongful Conviction Unit, which tracked down the defendants whose cases were affected. The cases involved took place from 2004 to 2011, according to Elizabeth Felber, the supervising attorney for the Wrongful Conviction Unit.

An investigator and a team of interns logged calls and combed the city, looking for the people whose cases might be tossed out, to inform them of the news.

“They were happy,” Felber said. “But it was kind of a surprise coming out of the blue.”

Not all the defendants could be found, and a few had died, Felber said. She said that the high number of cases reflected the increased number of low-level arrests during that period; such arrests have dropped off considerably in the past few years.

Many of the people arrested were charged with trespassing, while others were accused of selling loose cigarettes without a vendor’s license — infractions that would now result in a ticket.

While the convictions were on misdemeanor charges, Felber said, they had consequences. At the time, a misdemeanor conviction could cause a person to lose eligibility for public housing, college loans and jobs, she noted.

Theodore Wilson, 62, who lives in the St. Albans neighborhood in Queens, was working as a mechanic in Jamaica in the early 2000s, he estimated, when he was arrested on trespassing charges after a friend buzzed him into her apartment building, he said. Wilson said he was going to get the friend’s keys so that he could fix her car.

“I loved to be a mechanic,” he said. “With the elderly, I helped them because they have cars, they have to go to the doctor, things like that, and they want to be independent, so I made sure their cars are running so that they can make it to the appointment.”

He served 10 days in jail, he said, followed by 60 days of probation. A few weeks ago, Legal Aid investigators came to his house and left a note, he said. When he called them back, they told him that his case was about to be thrown out, Wilson said.

While this conviction is not the only one on his record, it was the most personal, Wilson said. He was frustrated Thursday that while his conviction had been thrown out, it was because of a “finding of constitutional error” and not because he had been found to be innocent. Nevertheless, Wilson said he was relieved.

“If I’m wrong, I’m going to admit it,” he said. “But I was happy because I felt like at least something was done.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .