NYC Man Wrongfully Spent 18 Years In Prison Because Of Cops' Lies: DA

NEW YORK CITY — A man wrongfully spent 18 years in prison because NYPD cops deceptively used a photo lineup of a different man with the same name to pin a murder on him, prosecutors said.

Sheldon Thomas, 35, will walk into a courtroom Thursday for a hearing after Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez moved to vacate his conviction.

An investigation by his Conviction Review Unit that found the case against Thomas was compromised from the start by "grave errors and lack of probable cause to arrest" him, Gonzalez said.

Detectives, prosecutors and a judge all knew that a photo used to identify Thomas as a suspect in a 2004 murder actually showed a different Sheldon Thomas, but they forged ahead with a case that ended with a conviction, the probe found.

"He was further deprived of his due process rights when the prosecution proceeded even after the erroneous identification came to light, making his conviction fundamentally unfair," Gonzalez said of Thomas, in a statement.

A 63-page report by Gonzalez's team on Thomas' conviction details a cavalcade of errors and deceptions by NYPD detectives investigating the murder of Anderson Bercy, 14, in East Flatbush.

Police argued Thomas, another man and others who were not charged fired gunshots from a car at six people standing on a street corner on Dec. 24, 2004, documents show. Bercy was killed.

Detectives quickly zeroed in on Thomas, a suspected gang member who once pointed an "inoperable handgun" at police, but it quickly became clear they had no eyewitness identification or other credible evidence he was involved in the shooting, the report states.

Thomas told detectives he was in Queens playing video games during the time the fatal shooting unfolded, according to the report.

Gonzalez's team wrote that it became "apparent that the police were intent on arresting defendant for this crime regardless of the lack of evidence pointing to defendant’s participation," according to the report.

The chief accusation against the detectives centers around a photo lineup.

While a detective waited for a prior arrest photo of Thomas to be unsealed, they used a picture of another Sheldon Thomas to show a witness, the report states. Even though the witness identified the wrong Thomas, cops went to arrest the Sheldon Thomas they suspected, according to the report

A detective then lied on the stand about the photo array and about never knowing Thomas, the DA investigators found.

"Defendant was denied due process at every stage of this case such that his conviction was fundamentally unfair," their report states.

"Understandably, the police quickly focused on defendant—a known gang member with a prior gun charge, who had previously pointed a loaded firearm at police officers—as a suspect. But almost immediately, case detectives began conducting an improper investigation and violated defendant’s constitutional rights to get the result they wanted, including influencing a photo array identification procedure, arresting the defendant with no probable cause, and then lying on the stand to conceal their wrongdoing."

Read the full investigative report here.