DISTRICT ATTORNEY TIERNEY ANNOUNCES DISMISSAL OF CRIMINAL CASE FOLLOWING CONVICTION INTEGRITY INVESTIGATION & FILING IN SUPPORT OF VACATING CONVICTION

(SUFFOLK COUNTY, N.Y.) – Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney today announced the dismissal of three felony charges against Rodolfo Taylor, following an investigation by the Office’s Conviction Integrity Bureau (CIB), which resulted in the Office’s filing of an affirmation in support of vacating Taylor’s convictions and dismissing the charges against him.

“Today’s actions reinforce my mission in this office to seek out justice in all cases by investigating claims of innocence, remedying identified wrongful convictions no matter what their age, and providing proactive support, training and recommendations to prevent wrongful convictions, such as this one, to happen in the first place,” said Tierney. “I chose to dismiss all charges against Mr. Taylor because he was unfairly convicted, period.”

Taylor was convicted after two separate jury trials related to three gas station robberies occurring in Central Islip and Brentwood in 1984.  The CIB’s investigation determined that many items provided to Taylor by the Suffolk County Police Department in response to a 2004 FOIL request, were not present in the District Attorney’s files and had not been turned over to the defense at the time of trial.  These items included one of two supplemental reports by officers detailing the viewing of “photo books” at the police precinct and witnesses’ stated inability and/or lack of confidence in their ability to identify the perpetrator of the crime close in time to the occurrences. 

Also included in the FOIL disclosure were four photo arrays and accompanying statements of trial eyewitnesses, including an unequivocal statement “positively” identifying a different individual as the perpetrator of the crimes.

The affirmation, filed by the People, clearly provided the basis upon which Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice and the Supervising Judge of the County Court, the Honorable Richard Ambro, concluded in his ruling that alerting jurors to the fact that there had been misidentifications and other potential suspects identified by these eyewitnesses would have been critical in the proper defense of this case, where there was no corroborative evidence except for the mutually reinforcing in-court identifications made by this group of eyewitnesses.  

The suppression of the materials, first turned over after the Taylor’s FOIL request made 20 years after the prosecution of these matters, not only denied defense counsel the opportunity to investigate, in all three cases, whether his photo was included in the “photo books” viewed by certain eyewitnesses (which resulted in no identification of a defendant), but also dictated that jurors give greater weight to the in-court identification by the eye-witnesses than could be justified had all the facts been revealed. 

The CIB’s investigation of Taylor’s innocence claims, which is summarized in the affirmation filed in support of his motion to vacate the convictions, included a review of testimony provided at the 1985 hearings and trials, as well as subsequent testimony related to his appeal after initially being provided with the FOIL materials.  The CIB also reviewed other witness statements and spoke to Taylor.  The CIB also contacted and spoke to available trial witnesses, and the trial ADA.  Their conclusion, after thorough investigation, was that while the unproduced materials were highly probative, each of the witnesses, several of whom were robbed at different places and times, was consistent with each other at the time of the in-person lineup and at trial. 

The trial ADA, when interviewed in 2018, advised that she recalled each of the witnesses being absolutely and viscerally certain when speaking with her that Taylor was the perpetrator of the robberies that she tried.  In addition, the individual “positively” identified by an eyewitness in a photo array was incarcerated and could not have been the actual perpetrator, and Taylor as well as his misidentification and alibi witnesses were subject to significant cross-examination at the time of trial and did not strongly support his defense.  Despite these findings and a lack of sufficient support for the claim of actual innocence, given the serious Brady violations that the CIB found in this case, the ultimate outcome recommended was the same: all convictions should be vacated.

While it is the position of the CIB that there is insufficient support for exoneration, the secure conclusion was reached that Taylor was deprived of his fair trial rights as a result of the failure to provide the subject paperwork and that the failure to do so violated the People’s obligations under Brady and Rosario even if the failure was the result of police mistake or misconduct instead of prosecutorial misconduct.  After providing these conclusions to the defendant, a motion to vacate Taylor’s conviction was filed in Suffolk County Court by the Legal Aid Society of Suffolk County,

and an affirmation in support of the motion to vacate was filed by the District Attorney’s Office.  At a court proceeding today, Justice Ambro granted the motion, thus vacating the convictions. 

Because the eyewitnesses are no longer alive or no longer available, are unwilling or unable to recall and testify about the events occurring more than 35 years ago, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office cannot consider retrying the case.  Accordingly, the indictments must be, and were, dismissed.

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Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. No one is above the law.

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