Man wrongly convicted of rabbi's murder freed

NEW YORK - A New York man convicted of killing a Hasidic rabbi more than two decades ago was freed on Thursday after his conviction was vacated as a miscarriage of justice.

David Ranta, 58, spent 23 years in prison until the conviction integrity unit of the Brooklyn district attorney's office concluded after a year-long investigation that the case against him was fatally flawed.

"Sir, you are free to go," acting state Supreme Court Justice Miriam Cyrulnik told Ranta at a Brooklyn courthouse as relatives, including his daughter who was an infant when he was jailed, erupted in tears and shouts of joy.

Prosecutors had joined Ranta's defense attorney, Pierre Sussman, in asking Cyrulnik to vacate Ranta's conviction "in the interest of justice."

"The evidence no longer establishes the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt," said Assistant District Attorney John O'Mara, the chief of the conviction integrity unit.

Ranta was found guilty of killing Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger on Feb. 8, 1990, and stealing his car in an effort to flee following an unsuccessful attempt to rob a diamond courier. The crime rattled the Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn and prompted calls for swift justice for the perpetrator.

"As I said from the beginning, I had nothing to do with this case," Ranta told reporters following the hearing.

The case is the latest in a string of wrongful convictions that have gained media attention in recent months, creating a headache for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, who faces a rare primary challenge in September as he runs for a seventh four-year term.

On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked Hynes' office from retrying a man, William Lopez, whose 1989 murder conviction was overturned earlier this year after questions arose about witness accounts.

In 2010, a federal judge freed another man, Jabbar Collins, after he spent 16 years in prison for allegedly shooting his landlord. U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry concluded that Brooklyn prosecutors had relied on false testimony and threatened a witness and faulted Hynes' office for continuing to deny any wrongdoing.

Faulty lineup

Hynes created the conviction integrity unit in 2011 to review past convictions called into question. It began looking into the Ranta case after Hynes spoke about the unit to a gathering of defense lawyers, including Michael Baum, the lawyer who represented Ranta at trial. Baum asked the office to examine Ranta's case.

Investigators soon found that a key witness, a teenager named Menachem Lieberman who picked Ranta out of a lineup, had since recanted. He said he did not recognize Ranta but selected him after a detective told him to "pick the guy with the big nose."

A jail house snitch and his girlfriend, both of whom fingered Ranta as the shooter, also admitted to prosecutors that they made up their story to secure a favorable plea deal.

Ranta had long argued that the case against him was troubled, but he failed in two appeals of his conviction, with prosecutors opposed to his motion in both instances.

Chaim Weinberger, the courier who was the target of the failed robbery, testified at Ranta's trial that Ranta was not the man who tried to take his gemstones. In 1995, at a hearing to consider one of Ranta's appeals, Theresa Astin testified that her husband, Joseph Astin, had committed the murder.

Astin died in April 1990, two months after the crime occurred. Nevertheless, the evidence against Ranta was deemed sufficient until prosecutors reopened the case last year.

At Ranta's brief court appearance on Thursday, Justice Cyrulnik apologized to Ranta for his years in prison.

"Mr. Ranta, to say that I'm sorry for what you have endured would be an understatement and grossly inadequate, but I say it to you anyway," she said, shortly before Ranta headed home with his family. He carried a purple mesh bag with the belongings he had gathered from his prison cell only hours earlier.

Asked whether there was anything he wanted to do now that he was free, he smiled and said, "Yeah. Get the hell out of here, maybe."