The latter’s shortcomings have created barriers to preservation that Gillian Brown, executive director of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Agency ( BMHA), doesn’t think his agency can overcome. ![]() Willert Park formed a critical part of what became the de facto African American part of town.īuffalo built ten times more housing for white families around the same time and at a higher quality than Willert Park. Its construction, which was made possible by lobbying efforts on the part of the local Urban League, effectively enshrined segregation across the East Side of Buffalo. “You can’t look back.Willert Park was also the first public housing complex in Buffalo where Black people could live. How to move forward? “One day at a time,” he said. Malik, still stunned that the case was finally over, said he was heading to see his mother, who recently had surgery. “People, responsible people, who really did know better … all should have done something,” he said.Įllerbe, now a chef, is the father of a 26-year-old daughter whom he didn’t get to see grow up. This is about a systemic rot” at a time when panic about public safety made too many police, prosecutors and judges comfortable not asking enough questions, said lawyer Ronald Kuby, who represented Ellerbe and Malik. ![]() “This is no longer about one or two bad apples. While more than a dozen convictions in his cases have been overturned, prosecutors have stood by scores of others.Ī message seeking comment was sent Friday to an attorney who has represented him.īrooklyn prosecutors’ reexamination of old convictions is widely viewed as one of the most ambitious of its kind. Scarcella, who retired in 2000, has denied any wrongdoing. Citywide, killings topped more than 2,200 at their 1990 peak that compares to 488 last year and a low of 295 in 2018.īut after questions accumulated about Scarcella’s tactics, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office began in 2013 to review scores of cases that he had worked. Scarcella testified that he cursed, pounded a table and was trying to scare the then-18-year-old Malik, but didn’t beat him.Īt the time, Scarcella was a star Brooklyn homicide detective in a city reeling from crime. The men maintained that they had been coerced into false confessions, with Malik saying Detective Louis Scarcella screamed at him and slammed his head into a locker. He implicated Malik and Ellerbe as the ones who had torched the tollbooth. Police eventually came to question Irons, getting a confession that he acted as a lookout. Authorities gave mixed signals over the years about whether they believed the film had inspired the killing. The attack bore some resemblance to a scene in “Money Train,” a comparison that prompted then-Senate Majority Leader and Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole to call for a boycott of the movie. The booth exploded, and the 50-year-old Kaufman ran from it in flames. ![]() The attackers first tried to rob him, then squirted gasoline through the tollbooth coin slot and ignited the fuel with matches, authorities said at the time. 26, 1995, while working an overnight shift on overtime to put away extra money for his son’s future college tuition. ![]() Irons, leaving court, said only that he felt “great.” Malik said the dismissal was “definitely too little, too late, but everything takes time.” “They break you, or they turn you into a monster.” “What happened to us can never be fixed,” Ellerbe told the court as he quietly described the ordeal of prison. Malik and Irons, both 45, left court free for the first time in over a quarter-century. The case resounded from New York to Washington to Hollywood, after parallels were drawn between the deadly arson and a scene in the movie “Money Train,” which had been released four days earlier. The three confessed to and were convicted of murdering token seller Harry Kaufman in 1995. NEW YORK (AP) - After decades in prison, three men were cleared Friday in one of the most horrifying crimes of New York’s violent 1990s - the killing of a clerk who was set on fire in a subway toll booth.Ī judge dismissed the murder convictions of Vincent Ellerbe, James Irons and Thomas Malik after prosecutors said the case was built on falsehood-filled confessions, shaky witness identifications and other flawed evidence.
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