Disgraced detective shaken by man’s tears in wrongful-conviction case


Scarcella, the biggest crook of all.  NYC Italians never have liked blacks much

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Disgraced former NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella stopped in the middle of testifying in court Friday to complain that he was getting creeped out by the teary stares of another man in the room — the convict he is accused of helping to put away.

“Can you tend to this man? He’s making me a little uncomfortable,” Scarcella told the lawyer for John Bunn, who spent 16 years in prison for murder and is now fighting to clear his name.

As Bunn sat next to his lawyer, Glenn Garber, and dabbed his eyes with a tissue, Garber asked Scarcella, “Why? Because he’s almost crying?”

The retired cop of 25 years answered, “I have nothing against this man, but he seems a little stressed.”

Bunn was 14 years old when he was allegedly picked out of a lineup that Scarcella conducted in the August 1991 shooting death of off-duty corrections officer Rolando Neischer in Crown Heights during a botched carjacking.

Garber said Bunn was arrested on an unrelated robbery, then put into the lineup even though those charges were dropped.

Bunn and another man, Rosean Hargrave, were convicted of Neischer’s murder at a trial that lasted just one day.

Garber produced a police report Friday that said Scarcella was present for the lineup.

“I do not remember being present during the lineup of John Bunn,” Scarcella responded.

Prosecutors had alleged at the time that Bunn shot and killed Neischer, while Hargrave shot and wounded Neischer’s friend, fellow corrections officer Robert Crosson.

Scarcella, a star homicide detective in the late 1980s and ’90s, now stands accused of rampant misconduct, including coaching witnesses to lie and eliciting false confessions.

On Friday, he repeatedly denied having any involvement in Bunn’s case – until Garber showed him the first page of the case folder that listed him as the assigned detective.

“I was the assigned detective, although I had limited involvement,” Scarcella said.

Scarcella, 63, testified that he remembered little, if anything, about Bunn’s case, including when 77th Precinct cops grilled the sobbing teen, who was dressed in a T-shirt and boxers at the time, without his mother or a lawyer present.

Scarcella said that if he had been involved, he would have had “meticulous paperwork” on the case, considering the severity of the crime.

“I remember being at the precinct. I remember Detective [Stephen] Chmil conducting a photo array,” he told Judge ShawnDya Simpson, who will eventually rule on whether to toss Bunn’s conviction.

Bunn, now 38, did 16 years behind bars before being paroled in 2006.

“Your Honor, I remember just sitting around and wanting to go out and investigate about 10 other homicides I had,” Scarcella said.

Scarcella will have to return to court to be cross-examined by prosecutors, but that date has yet to be set.

Hargrave, who did nearly 24 years, had his conviction tossed out in April based at least partly on questions about Scarcella’s conduct during the investigation.

There were a number of missteps in the homicide case against them. Blood evidence from the scene was never tested and then later went missing. Fingerprints recovered didn’t match either Hargrave or Bunn, and cops and prosecutors at the time relied on Crosson, the only eyewitness.

Crosson, who testified in Bunn’s hearing last week, told cops at the time that the suspects were light-skinned, black males in their 20s and as tall as 5’10”. Bunn is dark-skinned and was around 5’2″ in 1991.

That description was notably absent in a recorded interview Crosson had with prosecutors the same day of the fatal shooting.

Six convictions tied to Scarcella’s work have been overturned out of 35 reviewed so far by the Brooklyn DA’s Office.

Original report here


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