Man Convicted Of Cypress Hills Killing Wants His Name Cleared

CYPRESS HILLS, NY — A Brooklyn man convicted of killing another man at a Cypress Hills party 14 years ago is trying to clear his name after spending more than a decade behind bars.

James Davis was found guilty in 2006 of shooting and killing Blake Harper during a raucous party at a Brooklyn Masonic Temple on Pennsylvania Avenue even though no physical evidence tied him to the crime, his Legal Aid Society lawyers say.

His lawyers filed a motion Tuesday to vacate his conviction, which they say rested on shaky eyewitness testimony — some of which has since been called into question. Lawyers also uncovered other evidence that points to a different shooter who bore a striking resemblance to Davis, Legal Aid said.

"This is yet another case of a mistaken identification that has robbed a man of 14 years of his life," Susan Epstein, a staff attorney with Legal Aid's Criminal Appeals Bureau, said in a statement. "We call on the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office to join us in this motion immediately, so that Mr. Davis’s nightmare can finally end."

Davis has spent a total of 14 years behind bars between his pre-trial stay on Rikers Island and his time in state prison, Legal Aid said.

His case has been investigated by the Brooklyn district attorney's Conviction Review Unit, which interviewed many of the witnesses referenced in the motion filed Tuesday as well as others, a spokesperson for the DA's office said.

Harper and Davis were both at the crowded party early in the morning of Jan. 25, 2004, but Davis had taken a cab to his girlfriend's house about an hour and a half before Harper was shot around 4 a.m., according to Legal Aid's motion.

A woman who had feelings for Davis told police he was the shooter and he was eventually arrested two months after the killing, according to Tuesday's court filing. But the girlfriend whom Davis went to see that night confirmed his alibi at his first trial, where a single holdout juror blocked his acquittal, Legal Aid says.

Davis was later convicted of murder and weapon possession and sentenced to 18 years to life in prison after his retrial, at which the same alibi witness did not testify, according to the court filing.

Davis' then-girlfriend has stood by her initial testimony, while two of the prosecution's eyewitnesses have since hedged theirs, with one saying he "didn't see him do it," the motion says. Two other new witnesses have also said that another man they knew from the neighborhood who looked a lot like Davis may have been the true shooter, Legal Aid said.

And the woman who first reported Davis to the police admitted before her 2013 death that she did so because she was upset he was "messing around with someone else," the motion says.

The DA's Conviction Review Unit received Davis' case in 2013, Legal Aid said, but Davis' attorneys have gotten frustrated with the delay in its investigation.

The spokesperson for the DA's office noted that it has overturned 24 convictions to date.

"We also spent months investigating this case and interviewed many of the witnesses referenced in the defense motion as well as other witnesses," the spokesperson said in the statement. "We will continue to investigate the claims made in the motion and respond to it in court."

(Lead image: James Davis was convicted of killing another man at this Brooklyn Masonic Temple on Pennsylvania Avenue in Cypress Hills. Image from Google Maps)