Lawyers for a Brooklyn man who claims discredited NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella manufactured the murder confession that helped keep him in prison for 26 years said recent allegations about the retired cop should get their client a new trial.
“Mr. Scarcella did whatever he could to close a case, whether it was destroying evidence or fabricating evidence,” lawyer Leah Busby said in court Tuesday at a hearing to determine whether her client Shabaka Shakur should get a new trial.
Shakur, 49, was convicted of the 1988 murders of two men in Bushwick based in part on a confession Scarcella says Shakur made.
Scarcella was a star Brooklyn homicide detective in the 1980s and ’90s, but all of his cases are now under review after allegations emerged that he coached witnesses, made up confessions, and used the same crack-addicted hooker as a witness in multiple murder cases.
Busby said she would introduce six different categories of evidence — including eyewitnesses, trial testimony and the new Scarcella allegations — that will show Shakur deserves a new trial.
Prosecutors argue that most of the evidence is old and was already explored at trial — and that Shakur would have been convicted even without Scarcella.
“Is it your position that if you take away Louis Scarcella’s testimony, you still would have gotten a conviction?” Judge Desmond Greene asked.
“Yes,” ADA Morgan Dennehy said, adding, “There is no evidence that Scarcella’s testimony was fabricated.”
“Scarcella is the most malignant piece of evidence in this case,” said Shakur attorney Ron Kuby.
“The confession Shabaka allegedly made exists nowhere but out of the mouth of Scarcella.”
The hearing will continue Tuesday.