Dear Readers,
Welcome back to yet another thought-provoking and insightful edition of Voices For Justice. The publication of this month’s newsletter marks twenty-one years since I’ve been stripped of my freedoms and wrongfully convicted of a crime I did not commit. In this month’s issue, we celebrate the release and exoneration of Sheldon Thomas, and address the blatant disregard for justice, which landed this young man in prison for the past nineteen years.
I first got acquainted with the name Sheldon Thomas back on Monday, June 12, 2006 after receiving New York Post article in the mail from my mother. Immediately after taking the article out of the envelope, I became numb. I was in Upstate New York in Auburn Correctional Facility, four years into my twenty-five-to-life sentence. I remember sitting on the edge of my bunk, holding the article in my hand, staring at the photo of the article, and reading the heading, “BUNGLAR COP RED IN FACE.” Directly next to the photo it stated, “NYPD veteran Robert Reedy admitted that he used the wrong photo to finger Sheldon Thomas in December drive by murder.”
The case against Sheldon Thomas started on Christmas Eve in 2004. Thomas was only seventeen years old at the time when he was arrested and accused of the drive-by shooting on the corner of E 52nd St and Snyder Avenue in Brooklyn, which claimed the life of fourteen-year old Andersen Dercy and wounded a man.
During a pre-trial hearing in 2006, Detective Reedy, the lead detective on the case against Sheldon Thomas, admitted during cross-examination that he used a photo of the wrong Sheldon Thomas, admitting that he falsely testified. In spite of the revelation of this critical piece of information, Sheldon Thomas was found guilty of a slew of charges: including one count of second-degree murder, five counts of attempted murder, and weapon charges, and subsequently sentenced to twenty-five years to life.
This horrifying nightmare for Sheldon Thomas happily came to an end this past March when he walked out of a Brooklyn courtroom a free man, after Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, and Prosecutor Charles Linehan, of the Conviction Review Unit (CRU) concluded that Sheldon’s conviction should be overturned and vacated. Thomas told reporters, “There’s so many times when I was in my cell I would think of this moment. Right now, I’m speechless.” District Attorney Eric Gonzalez commented, “I apologize for the role that my office has played in his incarceration.” He went on to say, “We must strive to ensure fairness and integrity in every case and have the courage to correct mistakes of the past. That is what we are doing in this case, where an extensive reinvestigation by my Conviction Review Unit revealed that it was compromised from the very start by grave errors and lack of probable cause to arrest Mr. Thomas.”
The case of Sheldon Thomas resonates with me because the miscarriage of justice carried out in both of our cases are so identical. Just like Sheldon Thomas, the detectives, prosecutors, and the trial judge in my case knew from the outset that I wasn’t the man who committed the murder, yet they proceeded anyways.
On April 10, 2002, Detective Robert Reedy of the 67th Precinct was assigned to investigate the murder of Victor Vulcain. During his investigation, he had an opportunity to meet with Paula Edghill, who called 911 and gave the description of a medium-height, dark-skinned male as the shooter. He also interviewed Jean Moyen, a friend of the deceased, who explained that Victor had expressed to him that he was jumped and assaulted by a group of guys from his neighborhood who lived across the street from his house earlier that week. It should be duly noted that the location where Mr. Vulcain was murdered, an eyewitness testified that neither Vulcain nor the shooter was from the neighborhood. That neighborhood happened to be my residence at the time.
Detective Reedy, along with fellow officers of the 67th Precinct, broke into my residence and searched my mother’s apartment without a search warrant, in search of a murder weapon that they claimed they were told was inside my apartment. No murder weapon, or any evidence, linking me to the murder of Mr. Vulcain were ever found in the apartment or anywhere else.
On April 12, 2002, I was arrested by Detective Reedy and brought into the 67th Precinct to be placed in a lineup. He intentionally altered my appearance by giving me articles of clothing to put on that wasn’t mine as well as placing a shower cap over my large afro to hide my hair. Witnesses never said the shooter had a large afro, but they did state the shooter had short hair.
Despite the lack of any physical evidence and a number of factors pointing to someone else as the perpetrator, Detective Reedy saw to it that I would be locked up, charged, and convicted of this crime. Just as he did in the case of Sheldon Thomas. To learn more about my case, please visit www.freegarybenloss.com, and listen to the Wrongful Conviction podcast, “Jason Flom with Gary Benloss,” episode 297.
LOVE, PEACE, TRUTH, JUSTICE, FREEDOM!
“Justice delayed, is justice denied,”
GARY BENLOSS
(#03A6415)
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