NYPD Narcotics Detective Facing 26 Criminal Charges Walks After Prosecutors Withhold Evidence

Failures

from the prosecutors-acting-like-prosecutors dept

NYPD detective Joseph Franco developed a late career habit of letting perps walk. Very late career. He was fired. But not before wreaking enough havoc, prosecutors were forced to toss nearly 100 convictions.

Franco spent two decades working for the NYPD. How much of that was honest work is unknown. He was charged with perjury in 2019. That was just the beginning. The Manhattan DA’s office decided to look into other investigations Franco contributed to. Investigators found several more instances where Franco’s reports and statements did not match recordings of drug buys Franco claimed to have witnessed. The end result was Franco being hit with 26 criminal charges, including perjury and official misconduct.

Franco is just one of several habitual liars working for the NYPD. Hundreds of convictions and cases have been tossed in the last couple of years because some officers preferred their wins to be unearned.

Ironically, Detective Franco is once again the beneficiary of official misconduct. His prosecution has been dismissed with prejudice because prosecutors decided to do a little cheating themselves.

A New York State judge, Robert M. Mandelbaum, found that prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office had failed to turn over evidence to the detective’s lawyers on three occasions, a major ethical violation, and dismissed the charges.

“As you have heard,” Justice Mandelbaum told jurors, “to date there have been two different occasions that you have heard about where the prosecution failed to disclose certain evidence.”

“It now turns out that the prosecution failed to disclose additional evidence only learned about today,” he added.

This is not an unusual occurrence. For years, it has been common knowledge that prosecutors tend to withhold evidence that won’t help their cases. In 2013, then Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (Ninth Circuit Appeals Court) called out the common practice of screwing defendants to obtain easy wins.

There is an epidemic of Brady violations abroad in the land. Only judges can put a stop to it.

“Brady” evidence is exculpatory evidence, something prosecutors love to withhold from defendants. Far too many prosecutors feel the criminal justice system offers too much justice to accused criminals. To ensure a steady stream of victories, prosecutors simply withhold anything that might poke holes in their own cases. Self-interest is a powerful motivator. Forcing people to defend themselves with inadequate resources is just part of the process.

This misconduct has produced some immediate action, however. Prosecutor Stephanie Minogue was immediately booted from her position as deputy chief of the Police Accountability Unit. This move suggests something more unseemly than the standard operating procedure of withholding exculpatory evidence from the detective’s defense team. Minogue’s removal from the Accountability Unit hints that she wasn’t all that interested in holding Detective Franco accountable.

If so, then this wasn’t prosecutorial cheating meant to give the DA’s office an unearned win. This may have been prosecutorial tanking: easily discovered misconduct meant to allow Detective Franco to walk away from criminal charges this prosecutor possibly didn’t feel like pursuing. Cops and prosecutors work hand-in-hand and enjoy an extremely incestuous relationship. A successful prosecution would just create friction in this mutual admiration society — one that could result in fewer prosecutions and convictions in the future.

Whatever it actually is, it’s ugly all over. The DA’s office has shown it can’t be trusted any more than the cops who have cost it dozens of convictions.

Filed Under: brady violations, evidence, joseph franco, manhattan da, nypd, stephanie minogue, withholding evidence