This Brooklyn judge needs to hang up his robe

In December 2004, 17-year-old Sheldon Thomas was arrested for a murder he did not commit, based on false identifications obtained through police misconduct. Last year, after he had served 18 years in prison, the Brooklyn district attorney’s Conviction Review Unit issued a scathing report of the misconduct that led to Thomas’ wrongful conviction — and acknowledged that Thomas was “denied due process at every stage” of the investigation and prosecution that led to his wrongful conviction.

The district attorney’s report did not, however, address the conduct of Acting Brooklyn state Supreme Court Justice Vincent Del Giudice, the judge who oversaw Thomas’ trial — and who allowed so much of the official misconduct to go unchecked, both before and after trial.

For example, at a pre-trial hearing, a detective testified falsely that Thomas had been identified in a photographic array by a supposed eyewitness to the crime. Confronted by Thomas’ defense lawyer, the detective admitted that he had lied under oath and then told the court what he knew all along: that the person the witness identified was a different young man with the same name (who had no connection to the crime at all).

Del Giudice held elaborate proceedings to absolve the detective of perjury. He then excused all the misconduct occurring before him, and the fabricated identification, by asserting, ludicrously, that the two Thomases — unrelated Black men, both innocent, who bore no resemblance to one another whatsoever — looked alike.

But that’s not all. Thomas was charged together with another innocent man whose identification had been similarly fabricated. Before the trial, the prosecutors investigated the co-defendant’s alibi, found that he was not a participant in the crime, and moved to dismiss the case against him.

In a proceeding kept secret from the defense, Del Giudice heard the evidence of the co-defendant’s innocence and dismissed the case against him. But then at trial, the prosecution, in an effort to reconcile inconsistencies in the identifications of Thomas, repeatedly asserted that both Thomas and the innocent former co-defendant — whom they knew to be innocent — were both at the murder scene acting in concert. Del Giudice permitted this misconduct, in full knowledge that what the prosecution was saying was false.

By allowing the case to go forward with such false evidence, Del Giudice all but ensured Thomas’ wrongful conviction. When he sentenced Thomas to a maximum term of life in prison, he told the innocent teenager: “You are a lost soul. You are almost beyond redemption. You are a menace to society. In fact, you act like a barbarian.”

After the trial, on Thomas’ request, I re-investigated the case and represented Thomas in post-trial proceedings starting in 2011, presenting new evidence establishing the fabrication of the identification evidence, the police misconduct, and Thomas’ actual innocence. Del Giudice denied our motion without a hearing, and even rebuffed our attempts to obtain the discovery we needed to further our case.

Years later, when the Brooklyn district attorney’s Conviction Review Unit took up the case, they uncovered and turned over information supporting everything we had said, including the secret dismissal proceedings of the other innocent co-defendant.

Sheldon Thomas’ 18 wrongful years of incarceration exemplifies Del Giudice’s cruelty and willingness to permit blatant misconduct by police and prosecutors. But as horrifying as it is, it is just one story in Del Giudice’s long history of irrevocable harms he has dealt New Yorkers from the bench.

A study published in March identified Del Giudice as the worst “excessive sentencer” judge in New York. The study used cases where the Appellate Division found sentences so excessive that they required correction in the interest of justice — a “rare and clear signal” that a lower court judge had made “an exceptionally troubling choice.” Del Giudice is responsible for half of all such sentences imposed by active New York City judges. The next worst judge has less than a sixth of his reductions in sentence years.

Del Giudice was first appointed to the court in 2002, during the era of sweeping criminalization and mass incarceration resulting from the so-called “war on drugs.” It is abundantly clear that he has carried that mindset with him to this day. Unfortunately, the lack of accountability has allowed cruel, regressive judges like Del Giudice to serve multiple terms on the bench, without serious scrutiny of their fitness to serve.

My experience and the other facts unearthed by comprehensive research of Del Giudice’s record have illuminated just how many “exceptionally troubling choices” he has made, and have shown that he should not be rewarded with any more time on the bench.

Risinger is the director of the Last Resort Exoneration Project at Seton Hall University School of Law.