Burton v. City of New York
| Decision Date | 26 September 2022 |
| Docket Number | 20-CV-9025 (AT) (RWL) |
| Parties | HUWE BURTON, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF NEW YORK et al., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION TO HON. ANALISA TORRES DEFAULT JUDGMENT
On January 24, 2019, the New York Supreme Court vacated a conviction that wrongfully sent Plaintiff Huwe Burton to prison for almost 20 years for a heinous crime he did not commit: murdering his own mother when Burton was only 16 years old. While trying to piece his life back together after gaining his freedom, Burton filed this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the City of New York (the “City”), detectives of the New York Police Department (“NYPD”), and the prosecuting assistant district attorney (“ADA”) (collectively, “individual City defendants”), for violating, and conspiring to violate, his constitutional rights. Burton and the City, as well as all individual City defendants, eventually reached a settlement for Burton to receive a portion of what he claimed in monetary damages. Only one defendant remains in the case - Stacey Blocker a/k/a Stacy Green (“Green” or “Stacey Green”). Green failed to appear in the action and has not responded to notifications and warnings of default. Accordingly, Burton now moves for default judgment and an award of damages against Green pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 55 (“Rule 55”). For the reasons set forth below, I recommend that the Court grant the motion for default judgment and award Burton damages in the amount of $19 million and post-judgment interest.
FACTS[1]
The facts of this case exemplify all too well a serious and tragic miscarriage of justice in which the judge who vacated Burton's conviction acknowledged that the “system ... failed him.” (First Amended Complaint (“Compl.”)¶ 167.[2])
A. The Murder Of Burton's Mother
On January 3, 1989, Burton was 16 years old. (Compl. ¶ 33.) That morning, at approximately 7:45 am, Burton said goodbye to his mother, Keziah Burton, and left for school, arrived there around 8:05 a.m., and remained at school until about 1:35 p.m. (Id. ¶¶ 33-34.) Later that afternoon, Burton returned home and found his mother dead and bloodied in her bedroom, having been stabbed and murdered with a knife. (¶¶ 36, 40.) The time of death was approximately 11:45 a.m., when Burton was at school. (¶ 43.) Although Ms. Burton lay murdered in her bed, her car was missing. (¶ 35.)
B. Green Lies, And The Police Obtain A Coerced Confession From Burton
A month before the murder, the Burtons rented their downstairs apartment to Emanuel Green and his common-law wife Stacey Green. (¶ 51.) The Greens had financial problems, and both had been arrested for assaulting and menacing their prior landlord before moving into the Burtons' apartment building. (¶ 53.) At the time of the murder, Emanuel Green was on parole for rape and robbery. (¶ 53.)
The police suspected that the murder of Ms. Burton had been an “inside job” committed by someone with access to the apartment building. (¶ 44.) One of the witnesses interviewed was Stacey Green. Green lied to the police falsely stating that she left for work at 8:10 a.m. that morning, that she had seen Burton's mother at that time and had briefly exchanged words, saying she would speak with Ms. Burton later because she was running late, and then left in a cab. (¶ 51.) Green also lied that Emanuel Green had left for work that morning. (¶ 101.) As it turned out, neither Stacey Green nor her husband went to work that day. (¶ 53.) The police learned none of the evidence that would have led them to suspect the Greens at the outset of the case, however, because they did not, at the time, attempt to corroborate the Greens' information or run a criminal background check. (¶ 53.)
Instead, the police trained their sights on Burton, the victim's 16-year-old son with no criminal history, and conducted a lengthy coercive interrogation filled with threats, lies, and made up facts. (¶¶ 44, 64-74.) Among other things, the detectives prevented Burton from seeing his father (¶ 67); told Burton that he was guilty of statutory rape for having sex with his minor girlfriend and would be sent to Rikers (¶ 66); pressured Burton to adopt a concocted story that he accidentally killed his mother while on crack (¶¶ 68, 70); and assured Burton that if he adopted such a story, he would be sent to Family Court to be released to his father instead of going to Rikers and spending the rest of his life in prison (¶ 68). Ultimately broken and unable to resist the detective's coercion, Burton “confessed” to the crime. (¶¶ 71-74.)
Less than three months earlier, the same detectives who coerced Burton's confession, engaged in similar tactics to coerce false confessions from two other young men that they had participated in the murder of a security officer. (¶ 61.)
C. The Police Ignore Alibi Evidence; Green Lies Again
In January 1989, Burton's case proceeded to the grand jury at which one of detectives that had coerced Burton's confession testified to the contents of that confession. (¶¶ 82-86.) While the grand jury was still hearing evidence, the detectives learned that their basis for initially suspecting Burton of his mother's murder was ill-founded. Whereas one of Burton's teachers initially had incorrectly informed the police that Burton had not attended his first-period class the day of the murder, the teacher came forward and informed the detectives that she had been mistaken and that Burton in fact had attended his first-period class. (¶¶ 55, 87.) That information was significant because it confirmed what Burton told the detectives and provided an alibi for Burton that he was not home at the time of the murder. (¶ 89.)
The detectives then immediately re-interviewed Green. Once again, Green falsely told the police that she had seen and spoken to Burton's mother at 8:10 a.m. as Green was leaving for work on the day of the murder. (¶ 91.)
Neither the detectives nor the assistant district attorney handling the case informed the grand jury of the new evidence essentially exculpating Burton. (¶¶ 92-94.) As a result, the grand jury indicted Burton for the murder of his mother. (¶ 94.)
D. Police And The Greens Agree To Concoct A False Story
Just hours after the grand jury indictment, detectives found Ms. Burton's stolen car with Emanuel Green at the wheel. Emanuel did not have an innocent explanation for possessing Ms. Burton's car. (¶ 95.) The detectives also learned that Emanuel worked nights and had lied about going to work on the morning of Ms. Burton's murder. (¶ 96.) The detectives thus recognized that Emanuel Green, not Burton, likely was the murderer. Similarly, the detectives recognized that the evidence pointed to Stacey Green being, at minimum, an accomplice to Ms. Burton's murder. She had repeatedly lied to the detectives about her and Emanuel's whereabouts the morning of the murder and withheld information that Emanuel was in possession of Ms. Burton's stolen car. (¶ 101.)
The detectives realized that this new information would lead to the unraveling of their coercion of Burton's confession and put their careers in jeopardy. So, rather than pursue the role of Green and her husband's roles in the murder of Ms. Burton, the police ignored the evidence and proceeded to further manufacture the case against Burton. (¶ 103.) The Greens were an integral part of that plan.
In exchange for leniency, Green and her husband cooperated with the police and adopted a false narrative prepared by the detectives. (¶¶ 104-05.) The statement prepared for Emanuel was that after Burton murdered his mother, he asked for Emanuel's help; Emanuel helped by making the murder look like a rape and robbery; and Emanuel took Ms. Burton's car to sell and split the proceeds with Burton. (¶ 106.) The statement prepared for Stacey Green falsely stated that she had gone to work the morning of the murder and did not learn until later in the week that that Emanuel had helped Burton. (¶ 107.) In return for the Greens' cooperation, Emanuel Green was charged with only possession of stolen property and hindering a prosecution and was not taken into custody for violating his parole. Stacey Green was not charged with any crime. (¶ 109.)
Immediately following Burton's indictment, his defense counsel requested production of the prosecution's file concerning Emanuel Green's arrest. The ADA refused and falsely represented that the information was not relevant. (¶ 113.) When Burton's lawyer and the ADA later entered into an agreement for disclosure of exculpatory and other material, the ADA did not turn over material information, including a report documenting the corrected information provided by Burton's teacher that Burton had attended his first period class, documents concerning the Greens related to Emanuel Green's arrest, and photographs showing signs of forced entry to Burton's apartment on the day of the murder. (¶¶ 114-15.)
In August 1989, the ADA convened a second grand jury seeking a superseding indictment against Burton to include additional charges. (¶ 116.) The ADA elicited false testimony from Emanuel Green that Burton committed the murder, even though that testimony included key facts that were inconsistent with what Emanuel Green had testified to at the first grand jury. (¶¶ 119-21.) The ADA also elicited false testimony about Burton from the same detective who testified at the first grand jury. (¶ 123.) The second grand jury indicted Burton on the additional charges. (¶ 124.)
E. The ADA Conceals Evidence Of Stacey Green's Lies Before And At Trial
In March 1990, the ADA received subpoenaed work records for Stacey Green on the day of the murder. The records showed that Green...
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