A Brooklyn jury took just nine minutes Monday to decide a “not guilty” verdict for a man wrongly imprisoned for almost 25 years on a murder rap.
Derrick “Fire” Deacon, 58, was convicted in 1989 of gunning down Anthony Wynn in a Flatbush apartment building during a robbery – but was granted a new trial in 2012 after a Jamaican gangbanger who became a federal cooperator in an unrelated case told the FBI that one of his fellow gang members was Wynn’s real killer.
The Brooklyn Supreme Court jurors who decided Deacon’s innocence in record speed were ecstatic about his freedom.
“I want you to understand that within two minutes [of deliberating] we had decided he wasn’t guilty,” the jury forewoman, who declined to give her name, told Deacon’s defense attorney outside court. “There was never even a shred of evidence against Derrick Deacon!”
Deacon took off his glasses and wiped his eyes as the verdict was read.
He was kept in custody on an immigration hold but should be out on bail in about a week, defense attorney Glenn Garber said.
Deacon’s family members rejoiced at the verdict.
“I was screaming! I was so happy to hear that he’s coming out and being free after 25 years,” daughter Carla Deacon, 30, said from her father’s native Jamaica.
“I would send messages to him – ‘Keep the faith’ and ‘I’m praying for him’ and ‘I love him.”
“We feel good because he’s free. We knew he wasn’t guilty,” said family member Myrna Williams, 77.
Another reason Deacon got a retrial was the recantation of witness Colleen Campbell, who testified she had seen the murderer fleeing the crime scene and knew it wasn’t Deacon – but had been afraid of the Jamaican gang and so didn’t want to finger one of them.
“Campbell also testified that she had initially told the police that the perpetrator was not the defendant, but that she had been pressured by police or prosecutors to provide ‘vague’ testimony at trial,” stated the 2009 Appellate Court decision that granted Deacon a new trial.
“Campbell testified that the police and/or prosecutors had threatened to “take away” her children if she did not cooperate with them.”