A verdict is imminent in the first retrial of a suspect whose conviction was tossed thanks to alleged shoddy police work by former Brooklyn Detective Louis Scarcella.
“This defendant is still guilty,” prosecutor Chow Yun Xie recently told the judge at the bench retrial of accused killer Eliseo DeLeon.
DeLeon spent 24 years in prison before his slay case was overturned in 2019 amid concerns about his disputed confession allegedly secured by Scarcella.
Judge Dena Douglas is expected to issue a verdict in the case by the end of the month — the first decision after a retrial involving a tossed conviction and Scarcella, according to The Associated Press.
DeLeon was 18 when he was charged with shooting Fausto Cordero during an attempted 1995 robbery as the victim returned home from a religious Confirmation.
DeLeon maintained his innocence and accused Scarcella and his former partner of trumping up a confession.
Scarcella was once hailed as an invaluable NYPD star known for helping to win convictions in the midst of a homicide epidemic in the 1990s. The now-retired detective, who has defended his aggressive tactics amid the wave of citywide violence at the time, said he doesn’t even remember being involved in DeLeon’s case.
But mounting concerns over the ex-detective’s methods have emerged in recent years, forcing the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and its Corruption Review Unit to junk roughly 20 cases he worked on.
While the office has determined that many of Scarcella’s cases were tainted, prosecutors have opted to retry two of them so far, including DeLeon’s.
Scarcella’s partner, Stephen Chmil, has previously copped to using “questionable tactics” in DeLeon’s interrogation but denied that any of them were illegal.
Scarcella once defended his general approach to policing on the “Dr. Phil” TV show after retiring.
“The bad guys don’t play by the rules when they kill Ma and Pop,” he said. “I don’t play by the rules, but I play within the moral rules and the rules of the arrest in Brooklyn.”
In DeLeon’s case, Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez explained prosecutors’ fight to convict the suspect once again.
“In every case involving [Scarcella], CRU exhaustively reviewed all evidence, and the decision as to whether to vacate or uphold the conviction is based on the facts of the individual case, mindful of past findings regarding Scarcella’s conduct,” he said in a statement to the AP.
Last month, Gonzalez dropped the murder convictions of three men who were accused of fatally setting a subway clerk on fire in his booth in 1995 due to concerns over Scarcella’s investigation in the case.