On July 22, 2010, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted the habeas corpus petition of our client, Darryl Whitley, who was convicted of second-degree murder in February 2002 and sentenced to an indeterminate term of twenty-two years to life imprisonment.
In 1981, a doctor at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital was shot and killed during an attempted street robbery. Thirteen years later, Mr. Whitley was indicted for allegedly being the gunman’s accomplice. The indictment was based solely on information provided by jailhouse informants who received considerable benefits, including drastically shorter prison sentences, in return for implicating Mr. Whitley. In 1997, Mr. Whitley’s first trial ended in a hung jury, as did the alleged gunman’s separate trial. After the alleged gunman was acquitted during his second trial, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office retried Mr. Whitley in 2002. During a pre-trial proceeding, one of the prosecution’s jailhouse informants – and the prosecution’s most important witness – recanted his testimony from Mr. Whitley’s first trial and prevented any cross-examination about the recantation by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. During the second trial, the prosecution read the jailhouse informant’s testimony to the jury without disclosing that this testimony had been recanted. After having the recanted testimony read back several times during deliberations, the jury found Mr. Whitley guilty of second degree murder. Mr. Whitley’s conviction was subsequently affirmed on direct appeal.
In 2006, Mr. Whitley, proceeding pro se, filed a habeas corpus petition, arguing, among other things, that his Sixth Amendment right to confront adverse witnesses was violated when the prosecution was permitted to introduce the jailhouse informant’s prior testimony without any cross-examination about the subsequent recantation. The prosecution immediately moved to dismiss Mr. Whitley’s pro se petition on the procedural technicality that one of his claims had not been exhausted in state court. After reviewing the petition, Judge Hellerstein appointed the Firm to represent Mr. Whitley based on his conclusion that Mr. Whitley’s petition was potentially meritorious. After the Firm opposed the prosecution’s motion to dismiss, Judge Hellerstein denied the motion and stayed the federal proceedings while Mr. Whitley exhausted his claim in state court.
After exhausting Mr. Whitley’s claim in New York state court – a two-year process which included briefing and oral argument before the First Department of the Appellate Division and briefing before the New York State Court of Appeals – the Firm submitted extensive briefs in support of Mr. Whitley’s habeas petition and appeared for a hearing before Judge Hellerstein. At the hearing, Judge Hellerstein stated that he appointed the Firm to represent Mr. Whitley because he believed the issues were “sufficiently difficult and complicated in both the state and federal systems to warrant an attorney” and “compliment[ed] [the Firm] for the dedication that [it] exhibited” to Mr. Whitley’s case. In a 40-page opinion, Judge Hellerstein granted Mr. Whitley’s petition, holding that the admission of the jailhouse informant’s testimony without any cross-examination or other evidence of the recantation violated Mr. Whitley’s constitutional rights to a fair trial and due process of law under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In vacating Mr. Whitley’s conviction and sentence, Judge Hellerstein observed that “the value of a constitutionally valid trial is fundamental to our way of life.”
The attorneys who have represented Mr. Whitley during the last three years are Partner Barry Ostrager and Associates Juan Arteaga and Chantale Fiebig, as well as former Associate Carlos Lopez.