{"id":1557705,"date":"2022-07-16T11:19:08","date_gmt":"2022-07-16T15:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1557705"},"modified":"2022-07-16T11:19:15","modified_gmt":"2022-07-16T15:19:15","slug":"they-spent-decades-in-prison-for-setting-a-subway-token-booth-on-fire-killing-the-clerk-they-were-just-exonerated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/they-spent-decades-in-prison-for-setting-a-subway-token-booth-on-fire-killing-the-clerk-they-were-just-exonerated\/","title":{"rendered":"They Spent Decades In Prison For Setting A Subway Token Booth On Fire, Killing The Clerk. They Were Just Exonerated."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">40<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthey-spent-decades-in-prison-for-setting-a-subway-token-booth-on-fire-killing-the-clerk-they-were-just-exonerated%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1557705&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>It was nearly 2 a.m. on November 26, 1995, when two men poured gasoline into a subway token booth in Brooklyn before lighting it on fire. The booth exploded, severely burning 50-year-old Harry Kaufman, the clerk. He died in the hospital two weeks later.<\/p>\n<p>Three teenagers \u2013 Vincent Ellerbe, James Irons, and Thomas Malik \u2013 later confessed to the crime and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, The New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/07\/15\/nyregion\/subway-murder-false-conviction-exonerated.html\">reported<\/a>. On Friday, the three men were exonerated in state court. Irons and Malik, each now 45, were immediately released from prison, as Ellerbe, 44, had been released on parole two years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwenty-five years I had to look in the mirror knowing that I was in prison for something I had nothing to do with,\u201d Ellerbe said in court, according to the Times.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe penitentiary breaks you or turns you into a monster,\u201d he added, \u201cand I had to become something I\u2019m not just to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When the three men were questioned, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brooklynda.org\/2022\/07\/15\/brooklyn-district-attorney-moves-to-vacate-unjust-convictions-ofthree-defendants-who-confessed-as-teenagers-to-horrific-murder-ofclerk-whose-token-booth-was-set-on-fire-and-exploded\/\">a press release<\/a>, they were coerced into confessing to the crime. When the DA\u2019s office reinvestigated the case more than 25 years after the three men were convicted, they discovered contradictions between the confessions and the evidence found at the scene, as well as contradictions between the confessions themselves.<\/p>\n<p>The reinvestigation found that the lead detectives on the case, Stephen Chmil and Louis Scarcella, fed Irons key details about the case, including photographs of crime scene evidence and describing or showing him a photo of the gasoline container. The details were then used against Irons during his trial to show that he had provided a detailed confession of the crime.<\/p>\n<p>Other details in Irons\u2019 confession were false, such as his claim to have doused the token booth door with gasoline \u2013 a fact negated by expert testimony during one of Irons\u2019 co-defendant\u2019s trials.<\/p>\n<p>For Malik, a witness identified him as the person she saw holding the gasoline bottle, even though she had previously identified a different man, who at the time was detectives\u2019 top suspect. That man was never charged. The jury was not allowed to hear about this witness\u2019 numerous contradictory statements, regarding the identification and other details that undermined her credibility.<\/p>\n<p>Ellerbe\u2019s confession contradicted evidence, claiming he used the gasoline bottle to write his street name on the outside of the token booth, even though a fire marshal testified that gasoline had only been poured into the coin slot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe horrific murder of Harry Kaufman shocked our city and devastated a loving family, but the findings of an exhaustive, years long reinvestigation of this case leave us unable to stand by the convictions of those charged. Above all, my obligation is to do justice, and because of the serious problems with the evidence on which these convictions are based, we must move to vacate them and acknowledge the harm done to these men by this failure of our system,\u201d DA Gonzalez said in a statement. \u201cMy heart aches for the Kaufman family and my office remains resolute in our commitment to seek justice for victims, while ensuring fairness to all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kaufman\u2019s son, Adrian, told the Times on Friday that he didn\u2019t expect justice following the exonerations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they didn\u2019t do it, who did?\u201d he told the Times, adding that he didn\u2019t think police would charge anyone else for the murder. \u201cI don\u2019t think there will be justice brought for his family.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was nearly 2 a.m. on November 26, 1995, when two men poured gasoline into a subway token booth in Brooklyn before lighting it on fire. The booth exploded, severely burning 50-year-old Harry Kaufman, the clerk. He died in the hospital two weeks later. Three teenagers \u2013 Vincent Ellerbe, James Irons, and Thomas Malik \u2013 &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1574014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1557705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1557705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1574014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1557705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1557705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1557705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}