NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – A reinvestigation into a 1996 fatal shooting case found the conviction of a man who served 14 years for manslaughter to be a “case of mistaken identity,” and the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office set to overturn it on Thursday.
Steven Ruffin, 45, was 18 when he was convicted of manslaughter. He served 14 years before he was released on parole in 2010, according to prosecutors.
Ruffin appeared in court at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday as Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced prosecutors’ plan to vacate the conviction, based on an investigation by his Conviction Review Unit.
“After a full investigation by my Conviction Review Unit, we can no longer stand by this old conviction and will move to give Mr. Ruffin his good name back,” Gonzalez said. “A confluence of factors, including errors by defense counsel and tunnel vision by law enforcement, produced a tragic result in this case – Mr. Ruffin was convicted for the actions of a different person whom he claimed to be the killer all along.”
On Feb. 5, 1996, 16-year-old James Deligny was fatally shot in Crown Heights after he was thought to be the person who robbed Ruffin’s sister of her earrings.
At trial, the defense argued that Ruffin’s sister’s boyfriend, who gave the murder weapon to the detective, was the shooter.
This claim was backed up by Ruffin, his sister and two eyewitnesses in trial testimonies, and they all said that Ruffin was down the block with his sister at the time of the shooting, officials said.
When called to the stand, the boyfriend consistently took the fifth, authorities said.
The district attorney’s office said that credible testimony at the trial shows that Deligny was approached by a group of young men. One of the men said “it’s not him” as Deligny reached into his coat pocket, as if he had a gun. At this point, he was shot.
Ruffin was partially convicted based on testimony by Deligny’s sister, who described the shooter as a man with a cracked tooth – a trait shared by the boyfriend and Ruffin.
He was also interrogated by now-retired Detective Louis Scarcella, and twice denied involvement in the shooting. Ruffin’s estranged father, a cop, was then called into the precinct and convinced him to confess. This confession is the content of Ruffin's third statement.
Scarcella has had over a dozen convictions he secured in the ‘80s and ‘90s overturned, according to reporting by the New York Daily News.
The jury acquitted Ruffin of murder, instead convicting him of first-degree manslaughter, the district attorney’s office said.
The CRU reviewed the case files, conducted interviews with most people involved in the case, and concluded that there were series errors by Ruffin’s now-deceased lawyer.
The defense attorney did not have the boyfriend show the court his cracked tooth; did not bring up that the prosecution’s sole witness did not undergo an identification process that included the boyfriend; and did not question witnesses to whom the boyfriend confessed.
The CRU determined that Ruffin’s confession and identification as the shooter was unreliable, his alibi plausible and accused police and prosecutors are suffering from tunnel vision and confirmation bias.
“I lost 14 years of my life for a crime I didn’t commit, and today will help me to move on from that chapter of my life, cleared of any wrongdoing,” Ruffin said in a statement on Thursday, provided by his Legal Aid Society attorneys and obtained by the Daily News.