New Yorker mistakenly convicted of murder released from prison after 24 of the year

A resident of Manhattan, who was unjustly convicted due to deception and perjury for a murder he did not commit, was released after serving 24 years in prison.

“It was so difficult to spend so many years in prison knowing that the case against me was completely fabricated,” said 47-year-old Pablo Fernandez. New York Post... “I survived because of my faith in God and because my family and my lawyers never stopped believing in my innocence.”

It all happened in 1995 - Fernandez was only 22 when he was charged with the hired murder of 18-year-old gang leader Manny Quintero on a crowded street in Harlem. In 1996 he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. But as the lengthy appeal process ended, witnesses and accomplices began to recant their words.

The Court of Appeal overturned his conviction in February. This happened after the main witness, Jesus Canela, said that the corrupt police officer Albert Melino forced the witnesses to falsely incriminate Fernandez.

At that time, the prosecutor’s office did not inform Fernandez’s lawyers that before joining the ranks of law enforcement, Melino, who was later fired from the New York police, was under active investigation for the sale of cocaine.

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After a three-judge panel overturned the guilty verdict last February, prosecutors have offered Fernandez to serve part of his sentence if he confesses to manslaughter. But the man turned down the offer, insisting that he was innocent - and spent another six months in prison before the judge finally gave him the option of being released on bail of $ 250, despite objections from prosecutors.

Fernandez was released on 2 on August, but Manhattan's district attorney assistant Jeanne Olivo insisted that his case be resumed. Finally, on 13 of September, Olivo relented and asked Judge Curtis Farber to drop the charges due to lack of evidence. The case was dismissed, and Fernandez left the court as a truly free man.

It was a long and expensive battle.

After the conviction was canceled, it became clear that the district attorney’s case had collapsed. For many years, witness after witness refused his testimony while Olivo tried to explain the flagrant inconsistencies.

Here's how the arrow described: a man with fair skin at the age of 40 years, with gray hair, pulled into the tail on the back of the head. Fernandez didn’t look like that at all: he was dark-skinned with short brown hair, but prosecutors tried to explain this by claiming that Fernandez had put on a disguise.

Two years after the murder, two witnesses came forward and were offered deals in exchange for confirming that Fernandez had been hired to kill. One of them, Raymond Rivera, lied that on the eve of the murder he allegedly communicated with the "gray-haired" Fernandez "with a tail on his head." But later, prosecutors found out that Rivera was in jail and released him exactly on the day of the murder, not before. The second witness refused to testify. Three more denied and reported that Melino had incited them to testify against Fernandez.

Defense lawyers tracked down the second victim, Henry Gomez, who was wounded in the leg during the shooting - he said Fernandez was not the killer.

“Our joy tastes bitter,” said attorney David Brown. "The case against Fernandez was built from the outset on police and prosecutorial misconduct and perjury by government witnesses."

Fernandez said the biggest gift was that his sick 83-year-old mother waited for him to be a free man from prison.