Exonerated and Set Free After 29 Years
Judge Dismisses Indictment Against David McCallum and the Late Willie Stuckey
David McCallum was 16 years old when he and another teenager confessed to killing a Queens man and dumping his body in a Brooklyn park.
When Judge Matthew J. D’Emic dismissed the indictment against the pair in Brooklyn Superior Court on Wednesday—28 years, 11 months and 12 days after his arrest—the 45-year-old fell face forward and wept.
But his joy was tempered.
“This is a bittersweet moment because I’m walking out alone,” Mr. McCallum said as he took his first steps as a free man. “There’s someone else who’s supposed to be walking out with me but unfortunately he’s not, and that’s Willie Stuckey. ”
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Mr. Stuckey, who was also exonerated Wednesday, died in prison in 2001.
The men were both 16 in October of 1985 when they confessed to the abduction and slaying of an Ozone Park man named Nathan Blenner, whose body was found in Aberdeen Park in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn with a single bullet wound to the head.
Their joint conviction for murder, kidnapping, robbery and weapons possession hung on two brief videotaped confessions investigators now believe were fed to them by detectives, part of what Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson called a “legacy of disgrace” inherited from his predecessor, Charles Hynes.
“I don’t know how else to describe that,” Mr. Thompson said of the case, one of many being probed by the office’s newly formed Conviction Review Unit. “I think the people of Brooklyn deserve better, and I think we should not have a national reputation as a place where people have been railroaded into confessing to crimes they did not commit.”
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Mr. Hynes couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. He has denied there was a pattern of misconduct among prosecutors when he was district attorney, as Mr. Thompson alleged during last year’s campaign. Mr. Thompson defeated Mr. Hynes in that race.
Mr. Hynes’s attorney didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.
Messrs. McCallum and Stuckey both recanted their confessions before trial and continued to proclaim their innocence after they were convicted. Mr. McCallum was repeatedly denied parole because he refused to admit to the killing, his attorney Oscar Michelen said.
“He told the parole board, ‘I fell for that trick once. Last time I said something to get myself out of prison, I never saw my family again,’ ” Mr. Michelen said.
Even with the confessions, the case against Messrs. McCallum and Stuckey was riddled with inconsistencies, his lawyer and Mr. Thompson said.
Neither of the boys had driver’s licenses, nor had they ever taken drivers education, yet they confessed to taking a Buick for a rambling ride through Brooklyn before abandoning it near where the body was discovered, said his lawyer.
The witness who first led police to Mr. Stuckey told police he had left his gun with his aunt for safekeeping and that she had lent it to Mr. Stuckey. But when investigators tracked down the aunt earlier this year, she denied ever having allowed her nephew to leave a gun with her, and she later confronting him at a family get-together, Mr. Thompson said.
“We’ve come to the conclusion that these statements were not the voluntary recollection and admissions,” prosecutor Mark Hale told the judge before Mr. McCallum’s indictment was vacated, adding that they were the product of “improper suggestion, improper inducement and possibly coercion.”
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Mr. McCallum had many champions in prison, including ex-boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, himself wrongly convicted of murder, and a Canadian film crew who spent Wednesday composing a new ending to their just-released documentary, “David & Me.”
Mr. Thompson said the victim’s family was “heartbroken” by the decision. “They want to know who killed their son,” he said, pledging to continue the search for Mr. Blenner’s killer.
Mr. McCallum’s case is the 10th to be cleared by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office since Mr. Thompson took office in January. About 30 have been reviewed and more than 100 remain.
“There may be more,” Mr. Thompson said. “We keep getting letters and phone calls, and we’re going to look at any credible claim of wrongful convictions.”