#Wrongfully convicted Queens man exonerated after serving 25 years for murder

Enlarge Image

Samuel Brownridge is seen in a mugshot from the murder he was exonerated from today.

In an emotional hearing, a judge Tuesday vacated the murder conviction of a Queens man who served 25 years in prison for a 1994 execution-style shooting he didn’t commit.

“To many of you, this may look like a victory. But as I’m before you today I cannot help but see all the loss —  but I also see hope. Hope for my future, hope for my family, hope for reform,” said Samuel Brownridge, 45, as tears streamed down his face.

The married father of three was released from prison in 2019 after spending more than half of his life locked up.

Justice Joseph Zaya’s eyes welled with tears as Brownridge spoke at the Queens Supreme Court hearing, which was conducted via Skype.

Zaya vacated Brownridge’s conviction on the grounds of innocence and dismissed the indictment based on a defense motion that Queens DA Melinda Katz supported.

“I do believe it’s important that I say how sorry we are for the miscarriage of justice, that grave injustice that occurred in this courthouse,” Zayas told Brownridge. “It seems to me that almost everyone in the criminal justice system failed you in some way.”

Brownridge was convicted based on two eyewitness identifications. But new evidence undermines the credibility of those accounts and implicates a dead violent felon, Garfield Brown, for the shooting of Darryle Adams, 32, on March 7, 1994, in St. Albans, officials said.

A group of four men, one of whom was in a wheelchair, confronted Adams. The man in the wheelchair struck him in the head with a bottle then another member of the group shot him in the head. There was no apparent motive for the crime, the Queens DA said in a statement.

Brown was killed in a shootout with police when they tried to apprehend him in connection to two unrelated homicides in 2002 shortly after he was featured on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted.”

During the hearing, Katz called the wrongful conviction a “double tragedy” noting that the actual killer went on to commit other murders.

Brownridge’s lawyer Donna Aldea disclosed in her motion for dismissal damning evidence that had been withheld from the jury.

Three men told police at the time that they were present for Adam’s murder and fingered Brown, a violent felon, as the shooter. Days after the murder, Brown confessed to committing the killing to a pal.

Brown also more closely resembled an eyewitness description of the shooter as a man in his mid-20s with a short fade haircut. Brownridge was just 18 and his hair wasn’t short on the sides.

During the hearing, Aldea said that despite overwhelming evidence of Brownridge’s innocence presented to the trial court and an appeals court after he was found guilty, his conviction was still repeatedly upheld.

“He is a man who is wronged, betrayed and failed by our criminal justice system,” she said, choking up.”[Despite this] his spirit is not darkened by hate or by resentment. He is driven by hope, by love and by gratitude.”