Derrick Hamilton Spent Over 20 Years in Jail Over False Murder Conviction

Well, it's an honor to meet you Derek, especially after such high praise. So tell me your story, like what happened to you? Well thanks for having me and Josh, thanks for the accolades. You know, I was a 17 year old kid running around Brooklyn at a time when Brooklyn was terrible. And I was a product of my environment. I was doing little robberies and you know, little stump stuff that adolescents do. And I got on the radar police department. They used to search me all the time, pat me down, you know, throw me up on the car. Regular stuff that happened in that community. One day a man was killed about 5am by some older guys in the neighborhood. The police had an identification of their car. They called the guy in and he somehow told them he rented me the car and that I was the one that brought the car back and told him that I had committed the crime and that I had shot the guy by accident. And that was my first real experience with the criminal justice system because it was a murder. I'm like murder? You know, I did a couple of robberies, you know, I did some petty stuff, but murder, that's not me. So you know, what was amazing to me is number one, nobody would have gave me their car at 17 years old, right? And any cop would have known that this guy wouldn't have gave me his car. But they arrested me and they charged me with murder. And I was convicted by a jury because they admitted grand jury testimony of a witness who came before the court and said, I've never seen this guy at all. The police made me lie in the grand jury and say that I've seen this guy. I'm not testifying. I refuse to testify. I'm not going to get up there and project myself. The judge told the prosecutor that day that they were dismissing the case, that if they don't get another witness, this case is going out of here. Judge's name was Lombardo back then. This was 1983. I went back to Rikers Island that day. We came back the next day. And the judge said that he thought about this all night and he felt that the only person would benefit from this witness not testifying would be me. Therefore, he was going to allow the prosecutor to admit their grand jury testimony as evidence in chief at my trial. And I would forfeit my right to confront the witness and let the jury hear the truth that she never saw the crime. So that was my first real experience. I was a young knucklehead, the lawyer that I had at the time, Candace Croats, said, Look, young man, get your head out your ass and you better read these cases and you better see what's going on like they're eroding you. She took the stand and told the judge what the witness told her. And I was convicted. I was sentenced to 25 years of life. And it was at that moment that I know that I had to study law, that I had to really dig deep in the books. And I did it in New York State. Thank God had a law library. They had all the books in the world. All you had to do was apply yourself. And I spent the next five and six years working on my case. In 1987, the appellate division in that case found that the judge had no evidence whatsoever that me or anybody acting on my behalf had threatened this witness, that anything improper. And as a judge was right, there was no evidence that can prove that. So they reversed the conviction. And I was able to get out of prison after six and a half years. Unbeknownst to me, there was a roll caught by the name of Louis Garcella, who felt that I didn't do enough time for this conviction. He didn't like the appellate division decision. Eight months later, I was in New Haven, Connecticut at a unisex alarm that I had on at the time. He came in that store and arrested me, told me I was going back to Brooklyn for a murder. And I'm like, a murder? This can't be true. Like, again? How many times has this happened? I went to New York. I was processed. About a year later, I went to trial. I was convicted. They brought a witness in by the name of Jew Smith, who said that she was present at the murder when her boyfriend was killed, that I was a gunman. I had a gun in my hand, and I shot this individual several times with this gun. But her original statement to the police said she wasn't there, that she never saw this crime. She was around the corner at a store. When she came back, her boyfriend was dead. The jury never heard that statement. But in any event, the ballistics evidence proved that this guy was shot with two different guns. He wasn't shot in the building when she said he was shot at, but he was shot outside in the street. Despite this evidence, I was convicted. After I was convicted was when I learned that she had first told the cops at the crime scene. She never saw the crime, but she had told her to a different detective. So I made a pro se motion to set aside the verdict. And in the motion, I argued that this detective that never came in, that she gave the statement to, could prove my innocence. And the judge ordered a hearing. For a year, he said, I can't give this guy a day in jail, let alone 15 years, which is the minimum. I want this witness to come back. The prosecutor said, I'm not calling him. And the judge said, if you don't call her back, this case is going to a new trial. Right? They called her back. And she admitted that she never saw the crime. That the detective, Louis Garcelle, told her what happened and told her that if she didn't get up here and say that I committed the crime, she was going to jail. She was on parole. Her boyfriend was a felon that just got out. She had kids. She was going to jail. She said, what was I supposed to do? Here's the system telling me this, that if I don't come in and say this, I'm going to jail. And I came in and said it. The judge ruled a year later that, again, he felt that I was, he said there was a common thread of string. I manipulated this evidence. Again, I called the detective. The detective came in and said exactly what the witness said, that she told him she didn't see the crime, that she was beat up and took to the precinct and told she was going to jail. And had that jury heard that, there'd have been different results. At the trial, they told the jury that her first statement was the most important statement in this case. And then when the police arrived on the scene, she didn't hesitate. She said, Derek Hamilton, somebody I know my entire life committed the crime, which wasn't true. In fact, she said the truth, which she didn't see the crime, because she was someone else. I was sentenced to 25 years of life. I filed numerous post-conviction motions after post-conviction motions every time a judge gave me a hearing. Every time he said he could throw the case out, every time he said he was troubled by this conviction, the prosecutor would come in and tell him I'm a bad guy, that this is not somebody you want to release, that they put imagined harms in making a judge think that I was the most terrible person in the world. And he would deny the motion every single time. I filed numerous motions, numerous post-convictions. I did everything you could imagine to prove my innocence, but to no avail. I began going to parole board around 2009. It was a very traumatic experience for me, because at that time, the parole board wanted me to admit guilt, and I wasn't going to do that. I'm not going to come in and say I killed somebody I didn't kill. I'm not doing that. I don't care what you say. And I had to challenge them and fight them for two years. And then my family went out in protest, and we got a daily news article put out that said that I will be free if the court would just basically give me justice. If they just give this guy a fair shot, he'd be home. So it changed the mentality of the parole board. They looked at all of my evidence, and they said, you know, based on the evidence that you presented here, we believe in your innocence. Like this evidence speaks for itself. Even the judge said you was innocent. I don't know what you're doing here all these years. And they released me. And at that point, I began a crusade, because when I was in prison, there were several guys. We built something called the actual innocence team, guys who I was working in the law library. So I would read guys' case and check them out. So what I had to do was get families together, get people to come together and bring their family and say, look, let's send these people to the city hall. Let them know there's a lot of us in here. It's not just me. It's white. There's black. There's a bunch of us in here. They got the same issue, that they're procedurally borrowing us. They're not looking at our case. They're just kicking it into the garbage. We don't want to hear it. Get out of here. Right? Because they can. They had the power. So we started bringing attention to these cases to change the whole dynamic. So when I got out, I joined that group, family and friends of the Romans, convictions. We had the PR guy by the name of Lonnie Surry, who was helping us keep it together. And we just began blasting the prosecutors. We began protesting outside the offices and getting rid of them. The first one we was able to get rid of was Charles Hines in Brooklyn, the prosecutor that sent me to prison. We were able to remove him and put a progressive prosecutor in there and agreed that he would look at these convictions that he was elected. So he got in, and in two years he exonerated 22 people. And he found that there was a systemic racist problem in Brooklyn that was convicting the wrong people. Fortunately for me, the New York Times reporter called me, and I believe it was 2012, and they said, why are people afraid of the police? I just thought, are you kidding me? Why are they afraid of the police? And I told them names of guys that I knew that was in prison that this cop set up. And a lawyer had contacted me and said that he was working on a case, which this cop framed another guy by the name of David Ranta. And he said, in two weeks, there's going to be an article in New York Times that exposed this cop. And I told the New York Times reporter that. And I said, look, two weeks, if it comes out, you come back to me and I take you to these guys. And she came back, Frances Roebuck. She came back, and I took her to these guys. She got the prosecutor to agree to look at 50 of these cops' cases, 50 of them. And 20 was exonerated so far, those guys. And I was exonerated in 2015 and 2014 for the first time in New York history. The appellate division's second apartment ruled in my case that a free-standing action innocence claim can be recognized under post-conviction motion. And they said that anybody that's innocent, the courts could no longer procedurally bar you. They got to reach the merits of your contention. They just can't say, well, you should have raised this before, or your lawyer failed to do this before, or you should have did... You got to reach the merits of it. Get to the bottom line. This guy innocent or not. And when they gave me that opinion, it kind of like in itself exonerated me, because the prosecutor now had to hear my witnesses. I had alibis. I had police officers who said, look, this guy was in New Haven, Connecticut, not brook them when this murder happened. We know, because we've seen him there. He was at a party with him. I had a hotel we seeks. I had many witnesses that could verify where I was at on a date in the town of New Calvish's murder. The courts just don't let evidence in the cops. We in fact proved who committed the crime. The real murder was present when the cops arrived. He was on parole for manslaughter. They took his name down, but never even investigated who he was. So we had a lot of evidence. A witness who was there, who identified who was there, identified why the guy was shot. There was a 911 call that said three male blacks fleeing in the red car. He admitted they was in the red car. So there was just overwhelming evidence in my innocence. But courts was just throwing it into garbage because of the prosecutor lied to them and said he's a bad guy. So my experiences taught me that, you know, there's a lot of innocent people. I was in prison, man. Look, one thing about prison, and I tell people, they say, hey, everybody says the innocent. That's not true. Right? They say, I know you're that. But they're not going to tell a guy in the neighborhood with them that I know you're guilty. You know, I was with you. I know what you did. You told me everybody tells me from the same neighborhoods. So it's a small minority of people that's in the law library every single day. If you go to your guys working out in the way, pal, right, they're playing basketball. But the innocent guys in that law library every single day trying to find a way out. And that was me every single day. And I studied every book in there. I taught law classes. And I became very good at it. I mean, I was surprised at it. I know I'm in the college, right? When the lawyer gave me the first two cases and I read them, I was surprised how well I knew the cases. I was surprised how I comprehended them. And it was because of that that I kept going. And I found this civilian who liked me. He was working the law library. And the first test I got was a 44. And he said, look, man, I'm not going to waste my time. You had to explain what that is. What a 44. What a 44. A 44 was my grade on the test. I took a test. The first test he gave me was on the Constitution of the United States. I had to learn the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 14th Amendment. And I failed. I was playing. And he said, look, you're not going to waste my time. You're smarter than that. He challenged me. Next time I came back, I got a 97. So from that point on, I just started studying. I started gravitating to the older guys that knew more than me. Because I was young, they were willing to teach me. And I was like a young sponge. And I just loved what I did. I became passionate about it. And that's why I'm here now. Derek, what kind of repercussions are there for cops that do things like this? None. I mean, in our case, the statute of limitations that ran out on this cop. And let me just tell you about this cop. He didn't just do it in the police department. He left the police department, went into the DOE Department of Education. He did it there. He framed the guy in the DOE. They later found out the guy did nothing wrong. He had to reinstate him. This is just his nature and his character. And he just gets away with it? He gets away. What's his name? Louis Garcella. And he's out there still? He's out there. He's still getting the pension. The city is still paying this guy. We still got cases today that we are fighting in court for him. James Jenkins, Nelson Cruz. Are they still actual cases that we litigating? How many people do you think that guy wrongfully put in prison? You know, I'll tell you something. But I didn't even tell you, Josh, about this one. And it's gonna... This guy worked on over 200 cases. My father was killed in 1988. He was the detective on that case. And I'll tell you something about that. He said that one of the guys snatched a confession out his hand and ate it. I didn't believe that. I said as much as I want people who may be responsible for my father to... I can't trust this guy. I can't take nothing he'd say to be truth. Right? Just recently, that case was overturned. And he was in the Samuel Emerson case because of his sloppy police work. So he says 200 cases he worked on, I would like to believe at least half of those guys are innocent. Well, a lot of them have been exonerated. How many Scarcell exonerations have there been? Twenty to date. Twenty to date. How does a guy not just get locked up immediately for that? And when he testifies, and when he testifies, he has two lawyers with him now. Right? I've never seen a witness come to court and have two lawyers standing with him. We object to it all the time. But I mean, this is how much a criminal he is. He has two lawyers standing with him all the time. He's trying to protect his rights. And he don't remember anything now. He don't remember, you know, of course, he don't recall nothing. You got to bring the police reports to him and say, that's your signature. Did you do this? But he don't remember anything, of course. Selectively, he don't remember anything. Right? So, he's a criminal. He's a criminal. He's a criminal. He's a criminal. He's a criminal. He's a criminal.