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The Washington Post reported that Queens County Superior Court Judge Joseph Zayas said Friday that the public prosecutors who convicted them withheld information “indicating that others may have committed this crime.”
The newspaper noted that then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani promised after the crime that justice would be served quickly.
According to the newspaper report, Bill and Johnson, who were 19 and 22, respectively, confessed after being subjected to forced interrogations and their statements have all the hallmarks of false confessions that led to illegal convictions in the past.
At the time of the crime, Bell was a warehouseman at Old Navy and Johnson was a store worker. They had no criminal record and did not know Bolt, who authorities said was their partner in the failed robbery.
According to the lawyers, Bell made a confession “full of discrepancies and inaccuracies, as a result of interrogators providing him with the details.”
As for Bolt, 35, a father of four and owner of a Caribbean restaurant, he did not confess and was detained based on the identification of a witness, according to the details of the case in court.
The newspaper noted that, beginning in 2019, it revealed evidence that others may have committed the crime, and this evidence should have been presented to its attorneys immediately.
Their attorneys said there was no evidence linking them to the crime, and that the evidence indicated that a gang of thieves known as Speedstick was involved in the crime, but that the evidence was withheld.
The president of the New York City Police Association, Patrick J. Lynch, issued a violent statement after his release saying that the Davis family was “devastated that no one is responsible for their murder.”
The newspaper noted that the crime received widespread attention at the time, as New York City was experiencing gun violence.
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