A disgraced former Suffolk prosecutor has failed to produce required documents as part of a “serious misconduct” pattern on at least 16 cases, including more than a dozen murder trials, according to a report released Tuesday by District Attorney Timothy Sini’s office.
The multi-year investigation into former Assistant District Attorney Glenn Kurtzrock was conducted with the Office’s Conviction Integrity Bureau and the New York Law School’s Post-Conviction Innocence Clinic. Sini said it was the first public prosecutor’s office of a public prosecutor’s office to review and review its disclosure requirements.
“This is a historical report and it shows our commitment not only to redressing all past injustices by the Suffolk County Prosecutor’s Office, but to ensuring that such wrongdoing never happens again,” said Sini, a Democrat who lost his re-election contest in early beginning this month said in a statement. “… This was an exhaustive review of Kurtzrock’s cases, which resulted in hundreds of documents being released to former defendants in support of our mission.”
Kurtzrock worked in the public prosecutor’s office from 2004 and was assigned to the homicide squad from 2010 to 2017 when he was forced to resign by the then District Attorney Thomas Spota.
The 36-page report examined 20 cases Kurtzrock worked on between 2004 and 2017 and repeatedly included cases of failing to deliver documents to defense lawyers prior to trial or to edit statements in documents helpful to the defense . As a result of the investigation, prosecutors have since provided additional evidence in 13 murders in which Kurtzrock participated and in 76% of all cases investigated in the report.
Adele Bernhard, distinguished associate professor at New York Law School and director of the Post-Conviction Innocence Clinic, said the report “illustrates the best practices of a modern prosecutor: reviewing convictions to ensure justice, and using information passed through The verification process was won to make sure the entire office gives justice precedence over winning. “
Kurtzrock’s attorney David Besso called the report a “hit job” and said his client’s behavior was not premeditated.
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“Mr. Kurtzrock is an honorable guy,” said Besso. “He was a public prosecutor for a long time. He put his heart and soul into the job. Mr. Kurtzrock rejects any responsibility for deliberate action.”
Besso said Sini’s office never contacted him or Kurtzrock during the investigation to correct any mistakes or misunderstandings.
“It seems to have been the fair one,” said Besso.
Kurtzrock was forced to resign during the Farmingdale’s Messiah Booker murder trial in May 2017 after then-lawyer Brendan Ahern discovered that the Homicide prosecutor was deliberately withholding evidence that at least two other men might be responsible for the murder.
The murder charges against Booker and three co-defendants were dropped, and each of the four pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Ahern is now deputy head of the prosecution’s litigation department.
Kurtzrock’s violations were confirmed by a special referee appointed by the Complaints Committee for the 10th Judicial District and confirmed in an appeals department report published last year that suspended his license to practice law.
However, the expert opinion concluded that “there is no evidence that he has committed similar behavior in other cases”.
Eight months later, Shawn Lawrence’s murder conviction was overturned on similar misconduct by Kurtzrock and other prosecutors, which “had a devastating effect on the fairness of the trial,” the report said. Lawrence was released after serving a six-year sentence, ranging from 75 to life imprisonment.
After taking office in 2018, Sini founded the Conviction Integrity Bureau and tasked it with determining whether Kurtzrock’s misconduct was not isolated.
“The review concludes that Kurtzrock has committed similar misconduct,” as investigated in the Booker case, according to the report, which was presented to the Appeals Committee and Appeals Division to determine whether additional measures are appropriate.
Despite the unsuccessful revelations, Sini’s office said it had “confidence in the judgments and negotiated dispositions of the ADA Kurtzrock cases” in all cases except Lawrence and his co-defendant Allan McGhee.
To avoid future misconduct, Sini’s office announced that it passed a disclosure policy in 2018 – now mandated by a 2020 state law – requiring prosecutors to hand out most of the material on first discovery, rather than on Eve of trial, and implementation of a new public prosecutorial training program on disclosure requirements.
With Michael O’Keefe
Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has been with Newsday since 2011. He is alum from Queens College and American University.
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