An Albanian man who spent 12 years in prison for murder was ordered released yesterday after an appeals court ruled the Brooklyn DA’s office suppressed evidence from a cop that could have cleared him.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that Sami Leka’s 1990 conviction was hopelessly tainted because prosecutors hid the crucial eyewitness account of off-duty cop Wilfredo Garcia.
“It is likely that Garcia’s testimony at trial would have had seismic impact” on the jury’s verdict, especially since the panel initially deadlocked before voting guilty, the three-judge panel wrote.
The victim, Rahman Ferati was locked in an ugly “blood feud” with Leka’s kin and was shot dead on the evening of Feb. 12, 1988, while walking along Ocean Avenue.
Key prosecution witness Elfren Torres claimed he saw Leka step out of a car and shoot Ferati – but Garcia, the off-duty cop, told investigators that he saw a man shooting from inside the car.
The difference became crucial because Torres identified the standing shooter as Leka but recanted after the trial, saying the man he saw was probably not Leka but the victim, who was found with a gun next to his body.
But prosecutors hid the cop’s account from Leka’s lawyer.
After the trial, two other men involved in the blood feud told The Post that they were the ones who shot Ferati.
The controversial case finally came to a head yesterday when the appeals court issued a 49-page decision ordering Leka released within 90 days.
His new lawyer, Michael Sommer, said he was “thankful that our effort to right this injustice . . . has no longer fallen on deaf ears.”
But District Attorney Charles Hynes said yesterday he still believed Leka, 45, was guilty, and would take the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.