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Detective Who Helped Convict Man For Murder He Didn't Commit Has No Regrets
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Mar 31, 2013
Modified Mar 31, 2013
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Mar 31, 2013
Modified Mar 31, 2013
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The former NYPD detective who helped wrongfully imprison a man for nearly 23 years for a murder he didn't commit continues to deny responsibility for the injustice. "I stand by everything I did. I did my job and I would do it the same way…I sleep well at night," 61-year-old Louis Scarcella told the AP. "I caught a lot of cases and I got confessions…I was called in and I did my job and I got confessions."
The confession he coaxed from David Ranta in 1990 for the fatal shooting of rabbi Chaskel Werzberger was determined to be false after a year-long investigation conducted by the Brooklyn DA's office. Ranta spent almost 23 years in prison as a result of Scarcella's actions until he was released earlier this month.
The AP interview portrays Scarcella as an overworked detective who was "credited with solving sensational cases" and did anything to elicit confessions in the interrogation room.
Scarcella says he fed meals to suspects he was trying to get to confess. He would allow them to see their girlfriends, if that's what it took. He once got down on his knees and prayed with a man he was interrogating. But he denies ever abusing anyone.
In Ranta's case, a witness eventually came forward and told the DA's office that Scarcella told them to "pick the one with the big nose" out of a lineup. "I would have deserved death if I had done anything like that," Scarcella said.
Michael Powell reported last week that Scarcella never showed photographs of other suspects to witnesses, and didn't ask a single question of Ranta during his interrogation. “That’s not my style,” Scarcella explained to the judge at the time. "I told him what I thought of him.”
Scarcella's zeal for convictions continued after he retired from the NYPD and began working for the DOE's Office of Special Investigations where he used bogus evidence to wrongfully accuse teacher Theresa Capra of changing test scores.
For a year he slammed tables, yelled at, threatened and interrogated teachers at that high school. He conferred hundreds of times with Ms. Capra’s accuser and let him write much of the final report, which upheld every charge.
Mr. Scarcella even recommended that the state attorney general consider criminal charges against Ms. Capra.
It was devastation piled atop devastation—none of it grounded in fact.
Powell says that the head of the Brooklyn DA's Conviction Integrity Unit (profiled here by our favorite columnist Denis Hamill) John O'Mara has "ruled out" looking into Scarcella's other convictions.
Tagged
david ranta
louis scarcella
nypd
wrongful convictions
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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