Prosecutors are disavowing the convictions of three men who spent decades in prison for one of the most horrifying crimes of New York City's violent 1990s
Vincent Ellerbe, James Irons and Thomas Malik confessed to and were convicted of murdering token seller Harry Kaufman in 1995. The case resounded from New York to Washington to Hollywood, after parallels were drawn between the deadly arson and a scene in the movie"Money Train."
The confessions conflicted with evidence at the scene and with each other, and witness identifications were problematic, prosecutors say. Some of the men have long said they were coerced into falsely confessing in the case, which had a lead detective who later was repeatedly accused of forcing confessions and framing suspects.Malik was still getting his head around the long-awaited news Friday morning, lawyer Ronald Kuby said.
The attack bore some resemblance to a scene in"Money Train," an action movie that had been released four days earlier. Then-Senate Majority Leader and Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole took to the Senate floor to call for a boycott of the movie. From their arrests on, Ellerbe and Malik maintained that they had been coerced into false confessions, with Malik saying that Detective Louis Scarcella had screamed at him and slammed his head into a locker. Scarcella testified that he cursed, pounded a table and was trying to scare the then 18-year-old Malik but didn't beat him.
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