Jerome Thagard - Perjury / False Confession / Officer Misconduct

Thagard, Jerome; murder; NRE: perjury/false accusation, police officer misconduct, misconduct that is not withholding evidence, witness tampering or misconduct interrogating co-defendant

Suggestibility issues

317 F.Supp. 669; W.D.N.Y. 7/3/18; civil suit

"On the evening of April 29, 2009, sometime after 8:00 P.M., [Joseph] Northrup and his girlfriend, Suzanne Grover...engaged in a verbal altercation at their residence before Northrup fled the house and ran through the nearby housing projects...Grover pursued him on foot...Northrup ran through a 'big group of people' standing in the back of the housing projects, and then engaged in a conversation with another individual...Grover disengaged her pursuit and left the housing projects...She then entered a Jeep driven by her sister, Amanda Basile...Basile's friend, Christian Picone...and Grover's three-year-old son rode as passengers...Basile and Picone had followed Grover after she and Northrup fled from the residence.

"After Basile, Picone, and Grover drove away, they soon spotted Northrup again, at which time Grover left the Jeep and once again gave chase into an empty lot...Basile and Picone parked the Jeep in a nearby parking lot...Suddenly, a male individual (the 'shooter') ran up to the driver's side door, and asked Basile if everything was all right and whether he should 'go over there and shoot [Northrup].'...Basile and Picone both observed that the shooter was carrying a gun in his hands...Basile was confused by the shooter's question, and before she could fully react, the shooter began to run towards Grover and Northrup...Basile believed that she heard other people 'in the background screaming' the name 'Jerome.'

"As Grover and Northrup reengaged in their verbal dispute, the shooter appeared from behind Grover carrying a gun...The shooter declared that he had been told that Northrup was bothering the girls...Northrup approached the shooter and stated that 'he's not the only one with guns.'...The shooter then fired his gun several times at Northrup..."

"Basile provided an affidavit averring that [Buffalo Police Department Detective Mark Lauber] threatened to arrest her if she did not identify someone in the photo array as the shooter...Basile, who was 16 years old at the time...also averred that she had identified [Thagard] as the shooter, [and Lauber] told her that Grover had identified the same person...Although Basile had been unsure as to whether she correctly identified the shooter, learning that Grover selected the same individual 'convinced' her that she had done so...Grover also submitted a statement to the police indicating that [Lauber] told her that another eyewitness had already identified one of the six individuals presented in the photo array before she identified [Thagard] as the shooter...Instead, she explained that she believed the shooter was of Puerto Rican descent, and that she picked the individual who most closely resembled a Puerto Rican individual...[Thagard's] motion to vacate his conviction was granted on the consent of the [DA's] Office."

from NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):

"Police questioned two teenaged girls who were sitting in a car about 100 yards away* from the shooting. One was so traumatized by what she saw that she could not speak. When a detective asked her to write down what she saw, her writing included the word 'Philadelphia.' The detective assumed the girl was saying that the gunman was from Philadelphia Street, which was near the shooting."

[* Well, here we go again: Imagine standing at one end of a football field, and being able to tell who's doing what at the other end. That'd ridiculous: From that distance, you cannot discern one person's face from that of another.]

"Detectives determined that 16-year-old Jerome Thagard, who had a prior arrest on a shoplififting* charge that was later dismissed, lived on Philadelphia Street not far from the scene of the murder. Police said Northrup's girlfriend and the two girls all identified Thagard as the gunman in a photographic lineup."

[* So, this kid's supposedly gone from being a (aupposed) shoplifter, right to being a murderer?]

"The following day, police arrested Thagard...and charged him as an adult with second-degree murder. When Thagard's photograph was shown on television, a woman called police and said Thagard had robbed her at gunpoint the day before Northrup was killed.

"Thagard went on trial in Erie County...in January 2010. Northrup's girlfriend and the two girls who were in the car all identified Thagard as the man dressed in a dark hooded sweatshirt who shot Northrup. Northrup's girlfriend said the gunman asked her, 'Do you want me to shoot him?' and then began firing.

"Thagard did not testify or offer any alibi witnesses. On January 25, 2010, a jury convicted him of second-degree murder and he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

"Thagard then went on trial on the armed robbery charge. The victim admitted that Thagard only looked like the man who robbed her. Thagard's attorney, John J. Molloy, presented evidence that the woman's cell phone had been stolen, along with her purse, and that two calls were made from the cell phone shortly after the woman was robbed. One was to a taxi company and the other was to a known member of the 10th Street Gang, a Hispanic street gang active in the area of Northrup's murder. Molloy tracked down the driver of the cab who responded to the call and the driver said that he picked up two Hispanic men. Thagard, who is African-American, was acquitted by a judge who heard the trial without a jury.

"In the summer of 2013, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Buffalo was conducting an investigation of the 10th Street Gang and learned that ballistics evidence showed that the bullets used in the shooting of Northrup and the bullets recovered from two other shootings were fired from the same gun. One of the shootings occurred after Northrup was killed and Thagard was in police custody. Moreover, the gun was tied to members of the 10th Street Gang. "The information was passed to Buffalo police detectives and the Erie County [DA's] Office, which conducted a reinvestigation of Northrup's murder. Molloy, Thagard's defense attorney, interviewed the three eyewitnesses and all recanted their identifications of Thagard as the gunman.

"Northrup's girlfriend told Molloy that she was shown a photographic lineup and told detectives the gunman was not in the lineup. She said the detectives yelled at her and said that one other witness had identified one of the men in the lineup as the gunman. She told Molloy that she then identified the person who most looked like the gunman, and that was Thagard. Molloy also learned that when one of the girls had written down 'Philadelphia' when she was questioned after the shooting, all she meant was that she and her girlfriend had driven on Philadelphia Street to get to the location where the shooting occurred -- not that the gunman lived on Philadelphia Street."*

[* So, to briefly re-cap this 'detective' work: 1) One witness writes down the word 'Philadelphia;' 2) a cop assumes this means the perp lives on nearby Philadelphia Street, and looks for arrestees who reside there; 3) having found a one-time arrest for Thagard for shoplifting, the authorities figure they must have their murderer.]

"The two girls who were in the car signed sworn statements saying they were pressured by detectives to select a photograph in similar lineups and they both selected Thagard because he looked most like the gunman.

"Thagard told authorities that he was at home watching television with his mother at the time of the shooting and that he was on the telephone. The prosecution determined the alibi was credible. In December 2013, Molloy filed a motion to vacate Thagard's conviction and on December 9, 2013, Thagard was released on bond.

"On January 13, 2014, the Erie County [DA's] Office joined in the motion to vacate Thagard's conviction and dismissed the murder charge against Thagard.

"Thagard subsequently filed a claim for compensation with the New York Court of Claims and settled for $825,000. In April 2016, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit. In 2019, he settled part of the lawsuit with the city of Buffalo for $250,000."

[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]