Man cleared in a 1996 Brooklyn killing said for decades he knew who did it. Prosecutors now agree
NEW YORK — A man who spent 14 years in prison for a fatal shooting in the 1990s was acquitted Thursday after prosecutors said they now believe the killer was an acquaintance he associated with for decades.
“I lost 14 years of my life for a crime I didn’t commit,” Steven Ruffin told a Brooklyn judge after sighing with emotion.
Although Ruffin was paroled in 2010 and has since built a career in sanitation in Georgia, he said dismissing his manslaughter conviction and clearing his name will “help me move forward.”
“If you know you are innocent, don’t give up your case – keep fighting because justice will prevail,” Ruffin, 45, said outside court. “That’s all I’ve wanted for 30 years: someone who listens, really hears what I say and researches the things I tell him.”
Prosecutors said they were exploring whether to charge the man they say shot 16-year-old James Deligny on a Brooklyn street in February 1996 during a confrontation over a pair of stolen earrings. Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said after court that any charges would not come immediately.
“You have to be able to convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt, and we have to make sure that that evidence is sufficient to do that,” said Gonzalez, who was not a prosecutor when Ruffin was tried. “There are many factors working against us procedurally, but also actually – unfortunately this was 30 years ago.”
Ruffin’s conviction is the latest of more than three dozen Brooklyn prosecutors to dismiss charges after re-examination over the past decade.
More than a dozen, including Ruffin’s, were connected to retired Detective Louis Scarcella. He was praised in the 1980s and 1990s for his skills in closing cases, but defendants have accused him of coercing confessions, manipulating dubious witness identifications and other disturbing tactics. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Prosecutors said in their report on the Ruffin case that they “did not discover any misconduct by Scarcella in this case.” A message was sent to his lawyer seeking comment.
Prosecutors said the police investigation — and at the time that of their agency — was “completely inadequate” and tunnel-visioned, failing to look at the person they now believe was the shooter.
The mistaken identity shooting occurred when Ruffin and others were looking for a robber who had just taken earrings from Ruffin’s sister. In fact, Deligny was not the robber, authorities say.
Tipsters led police to Ruffin, then a 17-year-old high school student, and the victim’s sister identified him in a lineup that a court later found flawed. Scarcella was not involved in the setup, but he and another detective interviewed Ruffin.
The teen told them twice that he saw Deligny’s shooting but was not involved, according to police records cited in the prosecutor’s report.
Scarcella then brought the teen’s estranged father – himself a police officer – to the police station. The father later testified that he told his son to “tell the truth,” but Ruffin said his father leaned on him to confess.
And he admitted that he shot because he thought Deligny was about to pull something out of his jacket. Ruffin told detectives they could retrieve the gun from his sister’s boyfriend, and they did, the prosecutor’s report said.
Ruffin quickly recanted to his father, who did not tell investigators that his son had retracted his confession, according to the prosecutor’s report. The teenager testified at his trial that he had not shot Deligny, but had seen and known the killer: his sister’s boyfriend, the one who gave the police the gun, broken it up and stuffed it into potatoes.
Jurors at Ruffin’s trial heard from the friend, but only about his relationship with the defendant, his sister and others in the case. Once the jury was out of the room, the friend invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer other questions, including where he had been the night of the shooting.
Prosecutors did not release the friend’s name Thursday, and the names of attorneys who represented him were not immediately available. He told prosecutors during their recent reinvestigation that he had nothing to do with the shooting and that he did not give investigators the gun. He also said he never confessed to anyone, although prosecutors say Ruffin’s stepfather, sister and late mother all said he made confessions to them.
Asked about the friend Thursday, Ruffin’s attorneys noted that the prospect of any prosecution is now uncertain.
“We only wish that Detective Scarcella and others in 1996 had conducted the investigation they should have done and that they could have done it right the first time,” said attorney Garrett Ordower, noting that Deligny’s family may now never will receive the final verdict. are dead.
As for Ruffin, he is focused on his future, including promotional opportunities at his job in Atlanta. His now annulled conviction, he said, “has never defined me.”
“This never really spoke to the person I was or the man I was going to become,” he said. “So for me this is a great ending to a chapter in my life, but my life is still moving forward.”