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#Brooklyn man freed after 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit

#Brooklyn man freed after 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit

A Brooklyn man who served two decades in prison for a shooting he didn’t commit was set free last week by a judge who found him innocent of the crime.

“I don’t believe it some days, some minutes,” said Eric DeBerry, 44. “It’s surreal.”

He got the call from his lawyer last Monday at Mohawk Correctional Facility with the news he’d be going home after 20 years behind bars. An hour later, a correction officer escorted him into a van bound for the train station.

“I asked [the officer], ‘What row you want me to sit in?’” DeBerry said. “He said, ‘You can sit wherever you want, you’re not in prison anymore.’ ”

When he reached Penn Station, he met his wife Yvonne, whom he hadn’t seen in three years.

“I wanted to be cool,” he recalled. “I tried to hold it in, I tried not to cry but it’s just impossible. My wife has been there the entire time.”

A judge overturned DeBerry’s conviction for the 1999 Brooklyn shooting after the victim and the main witness against him at trial, Kareem Collins, recanted. The actual shooter, Roberto Velasquez, also confessed.

DeBerry’s lawyers from the firm White & Case had been heading upstate to meet him at the prison, but he was released so suddenly that they stopped and met him at the Poughkeepsie train station.

They were carrying a bag of McDonald’s takeout, which DeBerry’s wife had told the attorneys was his favorite food.

Eric DeBerry (left) and his wife Yvonne DeBerry
Eric DeBerry (left) and his wife Yvonne DeBerryGregory P. Mango

Clutching the order of two large fries and a double quarter-pounder, attorney Sam Hershey and his team, who took the case pro bono, boarded the train and handed over the bagged lunch.

“It had been 21 years of no McDonald’s,” DeBerry said. “It [the meal] was heaven.”

But DeBerry’s joy at reuniting with his wife and family, couldn’t overshadow the challenges of transitioning back to a life not glimpsed through steel bars.

He and his wife have a 21-year-old daughter, who is in college. She was just 3 when DeBerry went to prison, and he missed all the milestones of her youth.

The neighborhood he grew up in, Crown Heights, has transformed so dramatically in his absence he didn’t recognize the streets of his childhood now dotted with luxury rental buildings and upscale shops.

Eric DeBerry
Eric DeBerryGregory P. Mango

“This is my ‘hood. I was born here,” he said. “It made me sad a little bit.”

The finding of innocence, which DeBerry had been fighting for, for two decades, arrived 15 months shy of his release date. He was sentenced to 25 years for assault, robbery and weapons possession but would have been out in less with good behavior.

“My life is so bittersweet,” he said. “I believed in the system, I just knew I would not go to prison for this, and it failed me.”

He added, “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to reach out and for someone to hear you.”

Eventually, someone did hear him. His family approached White & Case and Hershey agreed to fight for his exoneration. “For him to believe in my story. I couldn’t ask for much more than that,” he said.

During the firm’s investigation, the alleged victim, Collins, provided a sworn affidavit admitting he had lied on the stand when he identified DeBerry as the shooter.

Collins said he had tried to rob Velasquez, who shot him. Collin’s version of the incident matched testimony Velasquez gave in 2003, admitting he was the shooter as part of a failed bid for DeBerry’s freedom.

Eric DeBerry
Eric DeBerryGregory P. Mango

But this time was different. After a two-day hearing, Justice Lawrence Knipel ruled on June 16 that DeBerry had “established his innocence by clear and convincing evidence” over the objection of the Brooklyn DA’s office.

“There was at times so little hope,” said DeBerry. “I just always said, I’m not going to let the system break me.”

After decades spent looking backward, DeBerry has shifted his focus to the future. His most important objective is to ensure his daughter graduates college, he said. Beyond that, he has a modest bucket list.

“I want to travel, I want to apple pick, I want to do little stuff I never did,” he said. “I just want to sit down, watch the sun rise and watch the sun fall.”

A spokesman for the Brooklyn DA’s office said they were reviewing the case to determine whether the witness had committed perjury.

Source

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