AMAZING POLICE AND PROSECUTORIAL FRAUD

Martin H. Tankleff was supposed to start his senior year of high school on Sept. 7, 1988. But before dawn, his parents were bludgeoned and stabbed during a rampage in their home on a cliff overlooking Long Island Sound. Within hours he was arrested, based on a confession that was handwritten by a detective, which Mr. Tankleff promptly repudiated and never signed. Still, it sealed his fate. In 1990 a jury convicted him of double murder, and he began serving two consecutive terms of 25 years to life in prison. He appealed, in vain, all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

But when he turned 34 in August 2005, Mr. Tankleff voiced renewed hope that "this is my last birthday spent in jail." In a year and a half of sporadic hearings in Suffolk County Court, he has challenged his conviction, against the opposition of prosecutors. Besides disputing the validity of the confession, his lawyers called 21 witnesses in a presentation of a new body of evidence, including an alternative theory of what happened that September night. Mr. Tankleff's lawyers accused his father's business partner and three former convicts of being the real killers. One admitted in an affidavit to being the getaway driver. Several witnesses said two others privately admitted their involvement, including one who told his son, "Yes, I did it."

The hearings heartened supporters who rallied to Mr. Tankleff's cause and prompted news reports, book projects, a film proposal and features on national and foreign television programs. A Web-based campaign to free him, organized by family members and others, has drawn responses from as far as Indonesia. Criminal law experts have also focused on the case, citing it as a classic miscarriage of justice. They say it has the earmarks of wrongful conviction, with a false confession, dubious police work and a prosecutor's conflicts of interest. "I never saw a similar case where a defendant was so obviously innocent," said Herbert A. Posner, a retired State Supreme Court justice who is following the case.

The prosecutors insist there is no merit to Mr. Tankleff's claim of innocence. They dismissed his new evidence, called his witnesses "misfits" and suggested that some had hoped to be paid for their testimony. "No credible evidence connects anyone other than Martin Tankleff to the murders," said the latest filing from Leonard Lato, an assistant district attorney in Suffolk. In an interview, Mr. Lato disputed all the Tankleff witnesses: "Some people are flat-out lying. Others may simply be mistaken or confused by the passage of time." He challenged the credibility of those with criminal records, drug abuse or psychiatric problems, as well as their motivation, saying they sought fame or were prompted by jealousy, revenge or other bias.

When the hearings ended last month, the judge, Stephen L. Braslow, said he would rule soon afterward on whether the new evidence is credible and would have changed the jury's mind. If he overturns the convictions, prosecutors could then retry Mr. Tankleff, charge someone else, or drop the case.

Criminal justice experts said the obstacles to reopening a case are daunting. Steven A. Drizin, legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, who studied the Tankleff case, said: "Unfortunately, in almost every wrongful conviction case, even when DNA excludes the suspect, law enforcement officers - whether blinded by tunnel vision, whether they don't want to admit a mistake, whether from fear of civil liability - they remain fixated on preserving a conviction, even in the face of compelling contrary evidence. That's the saddest thing in these cases."

Winning exoneration typically takes a decade and sometimes comes after the defendant dies in prison, said Samuel R. Gross, a University of Michigan law professor and co-author of a landmark study of 340 exonerations. He called them "the tip of an iceberg" of tens of thousands of such cases.

What makes the Tankleff case stand out, experts say, is that it lacks the DNA proof that has helped overturn many other convictions, yet it raises many other issues. Mr. Tankleff's lawyers make these claims: a botched initial investigation produced a false confession, new evidence identifies the real killers, the police detective in the case lied about his ties to one of the killers, the district attorney has connections to the killers, and prosecutors ignored evidence, coerced defense witnesses and shielded the real culprits. "It's an incredible case," said Prof. Bennett L. Gershman, who lectures about it at Pace Law School. "There are so many angles. I haven't seen anything like it." William E. Hellerstein said he had handled 300 cases as the Legal Aid Society's appeals chief in New York City, "but I never mounted what Marty has."

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