Brooklyn man cleared after 27 years behind bars for wrongful murder conviction
A Brooklyn man who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he says he didn’t commit was officially exonerated Monday, when a Queens judge overturned his conviction to thunderous applause.
Felipe Rodriguez, 54, was charged with the 1987 Queens slaying of Maureen McNeill Fernandez when he was a 25-year-old auxiliary NYPD officer — based largely on the testimony of a police informant who later recanted. Gov. Andrew Cuomo commuted his sentence three years ago.
Rodriguez cried as he told reporters that his son kept him going through the decades-long ordeal.
“Today I am a free man,” Rodriguez said though tears outside the courtroom.
“I had a little boy. He was three years old. His picture was on my [cell] wall,” Rodriguez continued. “I always said that I would get back to him however I needed to get back to him. I fought as hard as I could.”
After being cleared of murder in front the packed courtroom, Rodriguez lifted his son, Felipe Jr., now 33, off the ground and told him “It’s over” before the young man broke down in tears.
Queens County Supreme Court Judge Joseph Zayas apologized to Rodriguez, calling what happened to him a “miscarriage of justice.”
“Sometimes the criminal justice system makes mistakes, even this court makes mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes are minor, inconsequential, and sometimes they are monumental,” he said.
Since his release, Rodriguez has married and now works as a housekeeper at the Row NYC Hotel near Times Square.
Two lawyers from the Innocence Project labored for more than a decade to overturn Rodriguez’s conviction before the governor commuted his sentence in 2016. He was released from prison in January 2017.
“This miscarriage of justice took way too long to correct. It took someone outside the criminal justice system — Gov. Cuomo — commuting your sentence,” Judge Zayas continued.
“Mr. Rodriguez, you deserve better than that, but you never lost faith. You were lucky enough and blessed enough for [the Innocence Project] to take up your case.”
In 1990, a Queens jury found Rodriguez guilty for the death of McNeill Fernandez who was stabbed 37 times behind a warehouse in Ridgewood. He was sentenced to life with a 25-year minimum for parole.
The conviction rested on uncorroborated testimony from a police informant, who himself was a suspect in the murder, according Rodriguez’s lawyers.
That witness later admitted he fabricated the story in a secretly recorded interview, they said.
From the moment of his arrest, the Brooklyn man, who once dreamed of being an NYPD helicopter pilot, maintained his innocence — twice waiving his rights to a parole hearing because he refused to admit to the crime.
Dressed in a double-breasted suit and flanked by his family Monday, Rodriguez said he felt his “chains” were finally gone now he has been cleared.
“I still had the chains that were still attached to me; the conviction was still attached to me. But [today], the chains will fall… I will be absolutely, completely free,” he said.
When asked what he was going to do next, he said: “I am going to stuff myself with lobsters and seafood.”