'Central Park 5' Detective's Queens Convictions Tossed: DA

QUEENS, NY — Two Queens murder convictions linked to an NYPD detectives with a history of false confessions, including in the infamous "Central Park Five" case, have been tossed.

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz moved Thursday to vacate the convictions of Armond McCloud and Reginald Cameron.

The pair were convicted of murdering Kei Sunada, 22, a Japanese man, in 1994 based entirely off confessions obtained by Detective Carlos Gonzalez, prosecutors said.

Gonzalez, as wrongful conviction investigators later found, had a history of obtaining false confessions — most notoriously in the 1989 "Central Park Five" rape case, authorities said.

"Fairness in the criminal justice system means we must re-evaluate cases when credible new evidence of actual innocence or wrongful conviction emerges," Katz said in a statement. "Those who have served prison time for crimes they demonstrably did not commit deserve to have the slate wiped clean."

The indictments were tossed by a Queens judge, prosecutors said.

Katz also successfully moved Thursday to vacate the conviction of a third man, Earl Walters, after fingerprint evidence linked other men to the 1992 abductions and robberies of two women, officials said.

Walters served 20 years in prison after he was convicted in the case, which is separate from Cameron's and McCloud's.

Cameron and McCloud were 19 and 20, respectively, when they were arrested without probable cause in connection to Sunada's death, prosecutors said.

Roughly eight hours after the arrest, Cameron signed a written confession while being interrogated by Gonzalez, officials said. McCloud also confessed an hour later under Gonzalez's questioning, prosecutors said.

But both young men gave confessions that not only didn't match the crime and victim, but also mirrored errors in police reports, authorities said. They both incorrectly said, for example, the crime took place in a hallway, instead of a stairwell — a mistake that Gonzalez first made in a police report, prosecutors said.

"Inaccuracies in confessions that are similar to an interrogator’s own misunderstandings are commonly referred to as 'false fed facts,' and may indicate that the substance of a confession came from the interrogator, not direct knowledge of the crime," a release from the Queens district attorney's office states.

Both later recanted their confessions, with McCloud saying he confessed because he was hungry, thirsty and believed his innocence would come to light in court, prosecutors said.

McCloud was convicted of murder at trial, and he served 28 years in prison before he was released. Cameron pleaded to first-degree robbery in exchange for a dropped murder charge, and served eight years in prison before his parole in 2003, officials said.

Their cases were taken up by the New Jersey Innocence Project at Rutgers University, the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, the Legal Aid Wrongful Conviction Unit and the Queens District Attorney's Conviction Integrity Unit.