NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) –The Legal Aid Society, following a Monday morning hearing on a motion to vacate the 1996 murder conviction against Wayne Gardine, has called for his release from ICE custody and the termination of pending deportation proceedings.
This appeal comes after the announcement that Gardine, wrongfully convicted of murder and incarcerated for 29 years, was exonerated after a new investigation of a Harlem shooting case.
Gardine, a client of the Legal Aid Society, was exonerated after being wrongfully convicted in 1996 for a murder connected to a Harlem shooting two years earlier. Gardine endured pretrial detention, a prison sentence, and later, ICE detention, according to the Legal Aid Society.
Despite his claims of innocence, Gardine, 49, was denied parole four times.
“Unjust convictions are the height of injustice and while we can never completely undo the pain he has experienced, I hope this is the first step in allowing Mr. Gardine to rebuild his life and reunite with his loved ones,” District Attorney Alvin Bragg said.
After his release from Fishkill Correctional Facility, he was transferred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, and is now facing deportation to Jamaica.
The Legal Aid Society called on ICE to release Gardine from custody and terminate deportation proceedings pending against him following a hearing on a motion to vacate the 1996 murder conviction against Gardine on Monday morning.
“Every time I think of Wayne, I’m brought to tears," Grace Davis, Wayne Gardine’s mother said. “He lost nearly three decades of his life for a crime that he didn’t commit. ICE can end this nightmare now by immediately freeing my son.”
In 2022, Legal Aid’s Wrongful Conviction Unit started investigating Gardine’s case and the Manhattan District Attorney's Post Conviction Justice Unit joined in shortly after.
The investigation found several issues in Gardine’s case, the first being that it was built on a lie made up by two teenagers and then “relied upon by detectives more concerned with making an arrest than ensuring the reliability of the allegations,” the Legal Aid Society's statement read.
At the trial, only one of the teenagers involved testified, and he kept changing his story. This teenager was on felony probation and involved in another crime, but the defense didn't know this.
The other teenager, who didn't testify earlier, now says they were both too far from the shooting to see or hear anything.
There was no actual evidence or confession linking Gardine to the crime. The jury only heard from this one witness.
The detective who led the investigation has now retired and says he doesn't trust his own work on the case.
In 1994, he was new to being a homicide detective and followed the instructions of his supervisor, Detective Willie Parson who directed him away from checking other leads, according to the Legal Aid Society.
In the early 1990s, an investigation found that the 30th Precinct, where Parson worked, was involved in a big police corruption scandal. Parson was accused of stealing and dealing drugs.
Parson didn't face scrutiny in that probe but was arrested in 2000 for drug trafficking while he was still a NYPD detective. He pleaded guilty to drug distribution conspiracy and served eight years in federal prison.
“We are elated that Mr. Gardine will finally have his name cleared of this conviction that has haunted him for nearly three decades, yet he is still not a free man and faces additional and unwarranted punishment if deported,” Lou Fox, Mr. Gardine’s attorney with the Wrongful Conviction Unit at The Legal Aid Society said.