October 29, 1998

IN AMERICA/By BOB HERBERT (New York Times)

Justice, at Long Last

This summer I wrote two columns about a man named Jeffrey Blake, who was serving a term of 36 years to life in prison for the murder of two men in the East New York section of Brooklyn in 1990.
It was a spectacular and brazen crime, an execution in broad daylight. The victims were in a car. They were killed by a gunman who ran beside the car and riddled them with bullets from an Uzi as they tried to get away by backing down the street. The car crashed into a building and the gunman fled.
A man who claimed to be an eyewitness told authorities that Mr. Blake was the gunman. On the basis of his testimony, and his testimony alone, Mr. Blake was convicted.
It turned out that it was almost physically impossible for Mr. Blake to have committed the murders. He was at work that day in Bedford-Stuyvesant, about 4 1/2 miles away. And while the murders took place about 1:45 P.M., during his 45-minute lunch break, it is highly unlikely that he could have traveled the requisite distance through busy Brooklyn neighborhoods, ambushed and executed the two men, disposed of the murder weapon and returned to work as if nothing had happened by 2 P.M., which is when his boss and co-workers said he came back from lunch.
It also turned out that the "eyewitness," a flake and chronic liar named Dana Garner, had witnessed nothing. His girlfriend, Margaret Allen, who was supposed to have witnessed the murders with him, said in a sworn affidavit in July that she hadn't seen those murders "nor any other murder." She added, "I would remember a murder if I had seen one."
Mr. Blake recanted several months ago and when he was hooked up to a polygraph machine, he passed.
I wrote in August that the case against Jeffrey Blake "was virtually nonexistent" and that it was unlikely that Dana Garner was even in New York when the murders were committed.
Yesterday the District Attorney for Brooklyn, Charles Hynes, said he agreed. He directed his office to join in a motion, filed by Mr. Blake's attorney, Michelle Fox of the Legal Aid Society, to set aside the guilty verdict. He said Mr. Blake should be released from prison. That could happen as early as today.
Mr. Blake's appeals had been exhausted, and Mr. Hynes was under no obligation to reopen the case. But Ms. Fox continued her diligent efforts to prove her client innocent. After the columns ran, the D.A.'s office conducted a new investigation.
"We are convinced," said Deputy District Attorney Dennis Hawkins, "that the evidence that Legal Aid has found and that we've discovered in our own independent investigation -- if it had been revealed at the time of the trial, Jeffrey Blake probably would not have been convicted."
What usually happens in such cases, he said, is that the judge -- in this instance Acting Supreme Court Justice Robert Kreindler -- would vacate the guilty verdict and order a new trial.
But the D.A.'s office will not pursue another trial. Mr. Hawkins said,

"Since we do not think that would be the fair thing to do, we would at that point dismiss the indictment against Mr. Blake."

Mr. Blake learned of the new developments on Tuesday night, when he called his attorney from the maximum-security Green Haven prison in upstate Dutchess County. Ms. Fox said: "It was so wonderful to be able to tell him, 'Jeffrey, you're coming home.' He was so happy. He said, 'Yes-s-s.' "
Ms. Fox's feelings are mixed. She had spent several years working on appeals, convinced that her client was not only innocent but a decent person.
"It's gratifying that things finally worked out," she said. "I'm grateful to the D.A.'s office for finally looking at the case again and reinvestigating. But it saddens me that my guy had to give up eight years of his life before this happened."
Mr. Hynes said he was "relieved that this thing has been uncovered and this guy is going to walk out of jail after serving eight unnecessary years."
He reflected for a moment on the time when he had been a defense lawyer, and said:

"The thing that scares the hell out of the better lawyers -- and I like to think I was one of them -- is representing someone who is innocent. In this case, not only was there an alibi that was rejected by the jury, but Garner's cousin, who was described to me as a spit-and-polish young marine who was very believable, testified that Garner was not even in town, and the jury rejected that. I'm relieved that we were able to find other witnesses to confirm what the cousin said."

Meanwhile, there remains the problem of who committed the murders. Mr. Hawkins, the Deputy District Attorney, said he and others were now faced with the task of finding the real killers.