Paul Gatling - Mistaken Witness Identification
Gatling, Paul; murder; NRE: plea, mistaken witness identification, police officer misconduct, withheld exculpatory evidence, misconduct that is not withholding evidence, witness tampering or misconduct interrogating co-defendant
Suggestibility issues
N14 "On October 15, 1963, 43-year-old Lawrence Rothbort, a painter and sculptor, was fatally shot in his home in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn...Rothbort's wife, Marlene, who was nine months pregnant, said a black man with a shotgun demanded money and when Rothbort refused, the man shot him.
"A month after the shooting, police arrested 29-year-old Paul Gatling based on a tip from a convicted felon [Grady Reaves] who said he saw Gatling in the area of Rothbort's home immediately after the shooting. Gatling told police that he was there to pay his rent to his landlord -- which the landlord confirmed.
"Gatling, who was 6 feet 1 inch tall, was placed in a lineup with three much shorter men. Rothbort's widow was unable to identify anyone. Later, however, she viewed Gatling as he was being questioned by the detectives and identified him as the gunman."
[So, first, the lineup was suggestive, in that Gatling was put in with three much shorter men. Then, the widow just happens to see Gatling being questioned by detectives. Thus, she's now seen Gatling at the precinct twice . With such repeated suggestion, it was all but guaranteed that she would then 'identify' him.]
"Facing the death penalty, Gatling went to trial in Kings County...Court. In the middle of trial, he pled guilty and was sentenced to 30 years to life. He immediately attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, but was unsuccessful.
"Malvina Nathanson, a Legal Aid Society lawyer, came to believe in Gatling's innocence. In 1973, after years of working on the case, she sent a detailed application for clemency to Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who commuted Gatling's sentence. Gatling was released on parole in January 1974.
"Forty years later, in 2014, Gatling learned that Kings County [DA] Ken Thompson had formed a Conviction Review Unit to re-investigate cases of convicted defendants who made credible claims of innocence. Gatling sent a letter to Thompson, and the unit took up the case."
"In its reinvestigation, the conviction review unit discovered that Rothbort's wife, Marlene, had admitted to detectives that she was having an affair with a musician who boarded in their home [Leon Tolbert], and that the musician had told detectives he heard Marlene tell Rothbort that she would kill him if he continued to beat her. None of this had been disclosed to Gatling's trial attorney.
"On May 2, 2016, Thompson appeared in court with Gatling. After...Justice Dineen Riviezzo granted the prosecution's motion to vacate the conviction and the charges were dismissed, Gatling told the judge, 'I can't tell the court the pain and suffering. What has happened to me, this has stopped me from voting at every level. I come from a civic family and they don't understand why poppa can't vote.'"
from NRE synopsis (by Maurice Possley):
"'In 1964, an African-American accused of killing a Caucasian in front of his family with a blue-ribbon jury -- this case was hopeless,' Mark Hale, the head of the Conviction Review Unit, said. Gatling's conviction relied primarily on Marlene's eyewitness testimony.
"'Her dialogue was [out] of a bad b-movie. . . Mrs. Rothbort may have been involved in the murder,' Hale said.
"Gatling filed a claim for compensation with the state of New York and in 2018 settled the claim for $600,000. That same year, Gatling also settled a claim against the City of New York for $1.5 million."
[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]
