After 17 years in prison, innocent man finally freed
Roger Logan is finally free after spending nearly 17 years behind bars for a murder he did not commit.
Logan was convicted for killing Sherwin Gibbons in Bedford-Stuyvesant, but always maintained his innocence.
“It’s been a long wait,” he said after getting sprung in Brooklyn Supreme Court. “I want to just taste the freedom.”
The sole eyewitness against him was in police custody for much of the July day in which the shooting took place, contradicting her trial testimony that she saw Logan playing dice that afternoon.
“That testimony – whether by design or by mistake – was false,” assistant district attorney Mark Hale told a judge. “That witness could not have made these observations because she was incarcerated.”
Read more at New York Daily News
Logan was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The verdict was largely based on the woman’s now-discredited account. Retired detective Louis Scarcella is to thank for the years taken away from Logan. His rotten tactics prompted a review of some 57 cases he handled.
Scarcella had questioned Logan, got him to sign a statement that he was at the scene of the crime and even asked him to frame a third person. Logan refused. He later produced an eyewitness who falsely pinpointed Logan at the location, according to Logan’s lawyer Harold Baker.
Logan contacted prosecutors in Brooklyn last year, after David Ranta was exonerated. Ranta’s exoneration prompted further review of Scarcella’s previous practices. So far there has been no word on whether Scarcella will face any jail time.
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