MISHANDLED

Prosecutors Now Want to Toss Three Shady Convictions in Shocking 1995 Subway Murder

The Brooklyn DA said there were “serious problems with the evidence on which these convictions are based.”

Three men who spent decades in prison for murder are set to have their convictions tossed due to “serious problems with the evidence on which these convictions are based,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said Friday. Vincent Ellerbe, James Irons, and Thomas Malik confessed to the 1995 murder of token clerk Harry Kaufman, who was set on fire in a Brooklyn subway station. But Ellerbe and Malik said disgraced former NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella drew false confessions out of them. Malik, then 18, said he was screamed at and had his head shoved into a locker, the Associated Press reported. Gonzalez said Scarcella tampered with Irons’ confession, which is what implicated the other two. Ellerbe was released on parole in 2020, but Malik and Irons have been imprisoned since their sentencing. Scarcella retired from the force in 2000 and several convictions he was connected to have since been overturned.