Claudia Mann

Guilty until proven innocent

The National Registry of Exonerations has documented more than 2,100 wrongful convictions. Each case hides a massive human toll: even when uncovered, wrongful convictions take years or decades to correct.

According to the Innocence Project, mistaken identification is a major contributing factor to wrongful convictions with 72% of convictions overturned through DNA testing. Cross-racial identifications are especially problematic. Prosecutorial and police misconduct are another factor with DNA exonerations exposing official misconduct at every level and stage of a criminal investigation. Problems can also happen on the defense side. Public defenders, who represent people who can’t afford to hire their own attorney, suffer from incapacitating caseload and chronic underfunding. The result is that lower-income people don’t receive the vigorous defense they deserve.

For this project I have photographed five exonerees who shared their stories with me.

Yusef Salaam

Time Served: 6 years 8 month

Contributing Causes of Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions, Improper Forensic Science

On April 19, 1989, a young woman in the prime of her life was brutally raped in one of New York City’s most iconic spaces, Central Park. Five teens from Harlem—Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise—were tried and convicted of the crime in one of the most frenzied cases in the city’s history. The woman was dubbed the “Central Park jogger,” and the accused teens became known collectively as the “Central Park Five.” Yusef Salaam, was just 15-years-old when his life was upended and changed forever.

The following year, all five teenagers were convicted, in two separate trials, of charges stemming from the attack. Yusef Salaam was tried as a juvenile and convicted of rape and assault. He was sentenced to five to ten years.

In early 2002, Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and rapist, admitted that he alone was responsible for the attack on the Central Park jogger. Reyes had already committed another rape near Central Park days earlier in 1989, using the same modus operandi.  The victim of that rape had described the rapist as having fresh stitches in his chin and an investigator quickly linked Reyes to this description. Although the police had Reyes’s name on file, they failed to connect Reyes to the rape and assault of the Central Park jogger. 

Eventually, the evidence from the crime was subjected to DNA testing. The DNA profile obtained from the spermatozoa found in the rape kit matched the profile of Reyes, who is currently serving a life sentence for those crimes.

On December 19, 2002, on the recommendation of the Manhattan District Attorney, the convictions of the five men were overturned. Yusef Salaam had served nearly seven years for a crime he did not commit.

The investigation of the convictions of these five teenagers , who now go by the name of The Exonerated Five ,has raised questions regarding police coercion and false confessions, as well as, the vulnerability of juveniles during police interrogations.

Over the past two decades, Yusef has become a father, poet, activist and inspirational speaker. He continues to utilize his platform to share his story with others and educate the public about the impact of mass incarceration and police brutality rooted in our justice system. He regularly advocates for criminal justice reform, prison reform and the abolition of juvenile solitary confinement and capital punishment.

Shabaka Shakur

Time served: 27 years

Contributing Causes of Wrongful Conviction : False Confession, Perjury or False Accusation, Official Misconduct, Inadequate Legal Defense

Shortly after 10 p.m. on January 11, 1988, 21-year-old Fitzgerald Clarke and 23-year-old Steven Hewitt were fatally shot in Brooklyn, New York.

Police brought in 23-year-old Shabaka Shakur who was a friend of both victims. Shakur was initially interviewed by police detective Phillip Mahony, who would later testify that Shakur denied shooting the victims and claimed he was in Jamaica, Queens at the time of the crime with his girlfriend.

However, Detective Louis Scarcella said that he subsequently questioned Shakur and that Shakur told him that the victims were drug dealers and were going to kill him, so he shot them first.

A witness told police that Shakur—before he was arrested—had admitted committing the crime. That witness, however, was not called to testify at Shakur’s trial, and in 2014 recanted his statement, saying he had lied to police to try to obtain leniency on other charges pending against him at the time.

Shakur went to trial in Kings County Supreme Court in February 1989. Scarcella testified that Shakur confessed to both murders in his interrogation. Scarcella admitted that he had no notes of the interrogation—only a report that he said he typed up after speaking with Shakur.

On February 15, 1989, the jury convicted Shakur of two counts of second degree murder. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

In 2013, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office began investigating about 70 murder cases connected to detective Scarcella. The New York Times published an article accusing Scarcella, who retired in 1999, of misconduct in many investigations: fabricating evidence, coercing witnesses and concealing evidence of defendants’ innocence.

Among the cases the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit agreed to review was Shakur’s, but in 2014 the prosecution concluded that the conviction was correct and that Shakur was guilty.

Later in 2014, Defense attorney Ron Kuby presented evidence that Scarcella had fabricated the confession at a series of hearings on Shakur’s motion for a new trial.

On June 4, 2015, the charges against Shakur were dismissed at the request of Brooklyn District.

Rodney Roberts

Time Served: 6 years 8 month

Contributing Causes of Wrongful Conviction: Mistaken Witness ID, mishendeling of DNA edidence

On May 25, 1996, 29-year-old Rodney Roberts was arrested by Newark Police for an unrelated robbery. Police said they put a photograph of Roberts, into a photographic lineup and that the rape victim identified Roberts as her attacker and put her initials on the back of Roberts’ photograph.

Roberts was then charged with kidnapping and sexual assault. On July 16, 1996, Roberts pled guilty to kidnapping in Essex County Superior Court and was sentenced to seven years in prison. He also pled guilty to the unrelated robbery charge for a prison term to be served concurrently with the kidnapping sentence. The prosecution then dismissed the sexual assault charge. 

In May 2000, Roberts was denied parole, primarily because he refused to admit he had kidnapped or sexually assaulted the victim, despite his guilty plea. In January 2001, Roberts, without a lawyer, filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea to the kidnapping charge. Before a lawyer could be assigned, his motion was dismissed. However, an attorney was assigned not long after and the attorney and an investigator spoke to the victim and she denied identifying Roberts. Because the motion had been dismissed, the information was never presented to a court. 

In June 2004, when Roberts reached the end of his prison sentence, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office obtained a court order committing Roberts as a sexually violent predator and he was transferred to a secure treatment facility. 

After three denied motions to withdraw his guilty plea, in the summer of 2013, a motion  was files for further DNA testing. The testing was conducted and Roberts was excluded as the perpetrator. In November 2013, Roberts’ guilty plea to, and conviction for, kidnapping was vacated. On February 12, 2014, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the charge. In March 2014, the state of New Jersey agreed to set aside the finding that Roberts was a sexually violent predator and he was released from custody.

Kian Khatibi

Time served: 9 years

In 1998, Kian Khatibi was 22 years old and living in Westchester County, NY when he was wrongfully convicted of stabbing two men during a bar fight and sentenced to 7 to 14 years in prison. After eventually discovering that his brother had committed the crime, Khatibi successfully fought for his release from prison in 2008 and was finally exonerated in 2012. Khatibi graduated with honors from New York University in 2011 and passed the bar exam in New York after graduating from Cardozo School of Law in 2014. He established a law practice in New York City and is currently working to free other wrongfully convicted individuals.

David McCallum

Time Served: 28 years

False Confession, Perjury or False Accusation, Official Misconduct

David McCallum and Willie Stuckey were both 16 when they were convicted of forcing a 20-year-old man into his Buick Regal at gunpoint in Queens, killing him with a single gunshot to the head, then leaving his body in Bushwick, Brooklyn. After being beaten by police and coerced into confessing, David McCallum and Willie Stuckey gave brief and contradictory confessions, each pinning the homicide on the other. They both recanted the confessions almost immediately and rejected offers to plead guilty in return for prison sentences of 15 years to life. On October 27th, 1986, a jury convicted them both of second-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree robbery and criminal use of a weapon, and they were each sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. 

Stuckey died of a heart attack behind bars 16 years into his sentence in 2001, but McCallum persevered in trying to clear his name. After exhausting all of his appeals, McCallum's attorney approached Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit, and in 2014 District Attorney Ken Thompson's office and the Conviction Review Unit completed their reviews of David’s case, finding that there was no DNA evidence, physical evidence or credible testimony to link McCallum or Stuckey to the abduction or killing of the victim. 

On October 15, 2014, McCallum and the late Willie Stuckey’s convictions were thrown out at DA and David was freed after serving nearly 30 years behind bars.