Melinda Katz was elected on a reform platform, and advocates are watching closely to see who she selects to run her office. 

It was an October afternoon in 1987, and Clinton Turner was standing outside the Bland Houses in Flushing, Queens, awaiting prospective clients.

Turner was a drug runner, fetching visitors crack from inside the projects to help feed his own addiction. Early that evening, one of his regulars, William Clarke, pulled up in his ‘72 Mustang. Turner was upset with Clarke: the last few times he came by, Turner said, Clarke had driven off without sharing, violating their informal understanding.

So this time, Turner took Clarke’s cash, but switched out half the drugs with crushed up Ramen noodles. Turner went back outside and handed Clarke eight vials. Clarke peeled off — again without sharing.

“He thought he was being slick,” recalls Turner.

In Turner’s account, Clarke came back angry later that evening. His crack pipe was clogged. They exchanged words and got into a brief shoving match. Then Clarke left.

But Clarke told police a different story. He claimed he had been robbed by a stranger, who had broken into his car and then, after a chase, pulled a knife on him, snatching his wallet.

Clarke said he didn’t know the suspect, but in one early police interview he mentioned Turner’s street name, Screwgie. Then he identified Turner in a police lineup.

Turner, 29, was charged with robbery. At the trial, prosecutor Jesse Sligh got Turner to testify about his long history of petty crime. On the other hand, when Sligh asked Clarke about his record, the accuser swore he had none.

Choosing between a white victim without a record and black suspect with one, the jury found Turner guilty, and he served nearly 10 years in an upstate prison.

But the conviction was built on a lie. In fact, Clark had been arrested six times in Queens, and had been convicted of possession of stolen property — indicating he may not have been just an innocent bystander. Queens prosecutors had Clarke’s criminal records in their files, but they never said a word about them.

In 2004, seven years after Turner was paroled, a federal judge threw out the conviction, citing Brady v. Maryland, a Supreme Court ruling that requires the DA share evidence that is favorable to the accused and may change a trial outcome.

Federal judge Nina Gershon said Clarke’s criminal history “was readily available to the prosecution had it made the most modest effort.” She said the verdict relied on evidence that Sligh “should have known was false.”

But the court decision does not appear to have caused Sligh any professional damage. The Queens DA’s office is “unable to locate” any disciplinary records for Sligh, according to a letter issued to WNYC/Gothamist through a public records request.

While Turner remained in prison, Sligh rose through the ranks, becoming a top office executive in 1991, a position he held through 2019.

Sligh’s career trajectory illustrates a broader pattern in the Queens DA’s Office: prosecutors breaking the rules and earning promotions instead of discipline.

In fact, thirteen other Queens prosecutors held top leadership positions despite misconduct flagged in court decisions that sparked mistrials, set aside verdicts or nullified convictions, according to hundreds of pages of transcripts, court decisions and personnel records released under the state Freedom of Information Law

In some of these cases, the misconduct was cited but other problems led to the conviction reversals. In many of these cases, the misconduct was noted but subsequent proceedings did not necessarily lead to exonerations.

The DA refused to comment on whether these officials had been disciplined. But in response to FOIL requests, the office said it could not locate any disciplinary records for ten of the fourteen senior prosecutors, including Sligh. They did find disciplinary records for four of the prosecutors, but refused to release them, citing FOIL exemptions.

Most of the cases first surfaced in lawsuits against the DA’s office brought by civil rights attorney Joel Rudin, who represents three wrongfully convicted men. In one suit, Rudin’s team identified 118 cases between 1984 and 2017 in which appellate courts called prosecutors’ conduct into question.

Gothamist/WNYC focused on cases that featured conviction reversals, and involved high-level prosecutors who were still in office as of 2019. Rudin declined to comment for this story, citing the pending litigation.

Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, said the record is “very troubling.”

“If there are people who engage in deliberate acts of misconduct, not just negligence, it sends a message to others in the office that if you cheat, there’s no punishment,” he said. “Prosecutors have a lot of power. They can strike hard blows, but they have to be fair ones.”

The issue highlights a moment of transition for the Queens District Attorney’s Office. The record of misconduct findings run throughout the tenure of District Attorney Richard Brown, a towering figure who led the office from 1991 until March of last year, when he retired just months before his death.

Brown won five elections and praise from some quarters for his unyielding approach to crime. But critics charged his hammer came down far more lightly when it came to misconduct by law enforcement, especially within his own office. A ProPublica analysis found more citations of prosecutorial misconduct between 2001 and 2012 in Queens than in any other borough.

In November, then-Queens Borough President Melinda Katz won the race to replace Brown, and promised a raft of reforms, including the creation of a conviction integrity unit to review alleged wrongful convictions. But Katz has faced skepticism over her lack of criminal court experience and ties to the Queens Democratic machine.

In her inauguration speech this week, Katz introduced a new executive board for the office that features four longtime Queens DA attorneys and said Sligh would stay on as counsel for his old division. The DA did not respond to questions about the future of other senior prosecutors who supervised day-to-day court practices despite findings of misconduct. These positions include bureau chiefs, deputy bureau chiefs, senior assistant district attorneys and directors of other specialized divisions.

Christopher Dunn, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said Katz needs to dismiss prosecutors with documented problems of serious misconduct.

“A new prosecutor walking in has the luxury of saying, ‘These are not my people. These were not problems I was responsible for,’” he said. “If she doesn’t, those problems become her problems. That legacy becomes her legacy.”

Misconduct Findings, Then No Documented Discipline

To this day, Clinton Turner says, he is still confused about why Sligh, the Queens prosecutor, went “so hard” to convict him for robbery. Even after Clarke recanted in 1993, admitting he was not robbed at knife-point, Queens prosecutors successfully opposed Turner’s innocence claims.

While he was locked away, Lametrous Turner, his wife, struggled to provide for their two sons and send care packages to her husband. Working at a jewelry store full time, she was unable to keep her two teenagers focused on school and off the streets. In 1997, the same year Turner was paroled, his wife says their oldest son went to prison after he pleaded guilty to an assault and robbery.

Turner believes his incarceration made his sons feel abandoned and angry with the world. “I would have liked to have been here to help them out, you know, in the different ways that they needed my assistance,” he said. “And that hurts.”

Sligh did not respond to WNYC/Gothamist’s request for comment about the case. In a statement, the DA’s office did not address Sligh’s conduct directly, but argued that under state law at the time, prosecutors were not required to run criminal history reports on their witnesses.

Clinton Turner standing outside the public housing project where he used to live in Flushing, Queens 

Other prosecutors were cited for misconduct in multiple cases, and continued to get promotions.

In 1996, an appellate judge threw out a conviction after ADA Kenneth Appelbaum failed to give the defense sixteen pages of notes from an interview with a cooperating witness. The witness was a prolific burglar who had gotten a deal to testify. At trial, he claimed he had forgotten many of the details of the crime — but they were spelled out in the withheld notes.

By 2005, Appelbaum had risen to deputy bureau chief of the DA’s Special Victims Bureau. Three years later, Appelbaum earned another misconduct finding for “improper questioning” during a grand jury. His actions prompted a judge to dismiss a high-profile rape indictment against then-City Councilman Dennis Gallagher, a Republican who eventually pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors. In 2014, the office promoted Appelbaum to chief of the Special Victims Bureau, a position he still held as of this December.

Despite these findings, the Queens DA said it could not locate any disciplinary records for Appelbaum. The prosecutor did not respond to our questions. In an email, the DA’s Office did not dispute the misconduct. For the 1996 withholding notes incident, it cited a separate decision for a related defendant, which found Appelbaum’s actions did not taint that conviction. For the 2008 incident, it simply pointed out that the councilman eventually plead guilty.

The late Queens D.A. Richard Brown in 2015. 

In 2002, two men from Queens and Brooklyn were convicted of torturing an associate trying to leave the drug trade. During the trial, prosecutor Barry Pinto withheld critical information about a key witness in violation of a judge’s instructions. In a blistering decision, Justice Roger Rosengarten threw out the conviction. Pinto, the judge claimed, “was motivated by the attitude that ‘winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.’”

“The prosecutor was so egregious, so far removed from his obligation of good-faith and fair-dealing, and so lacking in ethical propriety as to deprive the defendants of their fundamental right to a fair trial,” he wrote. Rosengarten also cited two previous cases that resulted in mistrials due to Pinto’s alleged failure to turn over police records and other information.

Newspaper clipping from ADA Barry Pinto’s personnel file. 

Pinto’s personnel file indicates that the DA was well aware of the backlash against the prosecutor’s conduct. The file includes numerous newspaper articles, but no disciplinary records. On June 1, 2004, an appellate court reinstated the torture conviction on procedural grounds, noting the defense counsel had failed to object to the misconduct at the time. Later that month, the Queens DA’s then-Chief Assistant John Ryan sent a memo to all staff, congratulating Pinto on his role as a rotating supervisor in the Intake Bureau.

As of 2018, Pinto was still in a supervisory role in the same division, earning over $150,000 a year, according to his personnel records. Pinto declined requests for comment. In a statement, the DA did not dispute Pinto’s actions, but noted that the torture conviction was affirmed on appeal.

A Long-Entrenched Culture

Queens today is not the same place it was when Richard Brown first took over the DA’s office in 1991. Violent crime is down dramatically, and the borough is no longer majority white. Critics argue the office’s leadership did not keep pace as the population of Queens changed, along with the consensus around the need for criminal justice reform.

By 2018, for example, the Queens DA was the only borough prosecutor’s office still unwilling to create a wrongful conviction unit. That year, when the state legislature passed a bill to establish a commission addressing prosecutorial misconduct and wrongful convictions, DA Brown publicly asked the governor to veto it.

Some former Queens prosecutors say the office’s unwavering attitude allowed some to tune out misconduct. Defense attorney Jeffrey T. Schwartz , who worked in the Queens DA’s Office from 1987 to 1993, recalled that crime was out of control.

“Back then it was really death, destruction — in a sense, it was criminal chaos,” he said. “When I was in homicide I would sometimes go out three, four times a night. That was insane to see that many dead bodies in a nice borough like Queens.”

In such a climate, he said, prosecutors could rationalize misconduct. “ADAs can also get caught up in that crime fighting mentality, and cut corners,” he said.

Schwartz was not surprised by how the office often chose to resist exoneration efforts, even after misconduct findings. “When you as a prosecutor have to sleep at night and not feel you did something terrible, you are going to go with how you made up your mind,” he said.

Former Queens prosecutor Jeffrey T. Schwartz standing in his home 

Another former Queens prosecutor, who requested anonymity citing fears of professional reprisal, said the DA’s leadership fostered a macho culture that did not rein in excessively aggressive behavior. As of last March, the Queens Daily Eagle reported that nine of the Office’s twelve top positions were occupied by white men, several of whom had served in the office for decades.

During her campaign, incoming DA Melinda Katz promised to transform the culture of the office, diversifying its leadership and creating a conviction integrity review unit to clear people who had been wrongfully convicted. The defense bar has praised her, but political observers and criminal justice experts say the jury is still out on how effective such reforms will be.

A conviction integrity unit, for example, needs significant independence and political backing to be successful, says Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, a sociology professor at Brown University who spent years interviewing and observing prosecutors in Chicago.

“So they [the Queens DA’s office] really need to think about how do you infiltrate that office with outsiders that do not feel accountable to the regular rank-and-file prosecutors, even socially,” said Gonzalez Van Cleve.

Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University, said it would be relatively easy for Katz to create a facade of diversity without bringing about the transformation that progressive activists demanded during the Democratic primary.

“The election is over, but the governance piece is where the work really begins,” she said. “Just because you appoint women, people of color, women of color, whomever — a diverse board — that doesn’t necessarily change a culture.”

Hopes for Exoneration

Queens resident Eric Jenkins is holding out hope that the new DA, in his words, “cleans house.” A transformed office, he believes, could clear his name.

Eric Jenkins standing outside the apartment building he claims he was in during the 1992 shooting of Michael Reese. 

On the evening of April 11, 1992, Jenkins remembers being at his sister’s apartment in South Jamaica, Queens, watching the Bulls-Pacers game. It was the era of Michael Jordan and Reggie Miller, and as usual Jordan, Jenkin’s hero, would go on to win.

The game was interrupted by gunfire. A young man named Michael Reese was found dead at a bus shelter nearby. He had been shot multiple times in the head and neck. A month later, after an eyewitness identified Jenkins as the shooter, he was charged with murder.

At trial, Queens prosecutors withheld a deal they had made with another key witness in exchange for his testimony. The judge declared a mistrial. During the second trial, prosecutors misled the jury about the initial deal. Jenkins got fifteen years to life.

Photo taken from the location of the payphone where an eyewitness claimed he saw Eric Jenkins fire fatal shots at a bus stop across the street. The witness would later admit he had lied under oath. 

Sitting in his car on a drizzly December night, Jenkins recalls the hell that prison was.

“You see people getting killed, stabbed in the neck and walking around with knives in their back. I watched a guy get stabbed right in his back because another guy wants to use the telephone, and the guy’s taking too long,” he said, breaking down in tears. “You know, it could have been me.”

Jenkins says he kept his head down and studied law, filing his own legal motions until, in 2002, federal courts voided his conviction and sent the case back to Queens for a new trial, lambasting prosecutors’ misconduct.

And new problems kept cropping up. At one point, after the sole eyewitness said he had been pressured to lie by police, prosecutors offered Jenkins the chance to walk out of prison if he agreed to plead to manslaughter. He had already spent a decade behind bars.

But Jenkins insisted he was innocent. Even after his third trial ended in a hung jury, he refused to cut a deal and go home to his family. “If you did something, you own it,” he says, looking back on his decision. “If you didn’t do it, then you just say you didn’t do it, and you have to fight the system on it.”

His fourth trial ended in conviction. Jenkins remained in prison for the next seven years, until he was paroled in 2011. Now he’s hoping the new conviction integrity unit will review his case and exonerate him.

Cases like this illustrate why robust conviction integrity units are necessary, argues Karen Newirth, a staff attorney with the Exoneration Project, who reviewed some of Jenkins’ court filings but is not involved in the case. Appellate courts, she said, are unlikely to reverse convictions, since they are generally required to defer to lower-court decisions and are constrained by law and evidence frozen in the past.

“One of the interesting lessons from the DNA exonerations is how many of those defendants sought to have their convictions overturned through the judicial appeals process and failed,” she said. In many of the cases where people were later proven innocent, she continued, appellate courts had affirmed their convictions, often describing the evidence against them as overwhelming.

In court, Jenkins would now have to prove he is not guilty, and with no exonerating evidence like DNA, that may be impossible. But a District Attorney who is dedicated to reform, Newirth said, could empower a review unit to throw out convictions found to be lacking integrity.

“Does a conviction that resulted from a prosecutor’s failure to turn over materially exculpatory information, or where a prosecutor misled the jury, have integrity?” she said. “Does a conviction that turns on an eyewitness where that eyewitness was improperly shown a single photograph, and then told to lie, have integrity? I think that’s really the fundamental question.”

Today, Jenkins has a six-year old daughter and two toddler boys, and is now back at York College, trying to complete the degree he never got to finish. But the stigma of a murder conviction weighs on him every day.

“A lot of times I can’t even be honest with people about the life that I have lived. I can only give them a portion from 2011 on or from 1971 to 1992,” he said.

Jenkins says he cares more about Katz changing the office than financial restitution for himself.

“This is the only way they know how to work. They’ve been doing it for decades,” he said. “Can a tiger change his stripes? It can’t. So don’t expect the Queens district attorneys that are sitting in these high level positions, as she comes in, to change their stripes. They’re not.”