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Founding partners Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck awarded the National Trial Lawyers Lifetime Achievement Award

Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck have been awarded the National Trial Lawyers Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2012 Trial Lawyers Summit. Congratulations to both of them.

Vanessa Buch

Vanessa Buch joined NSB as a Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Fellow in 2011 after clerking for the Hon. Jon O. Newman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Hon. Andrew L. Carter of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Prior to clerking, Ms. Buch spent five years as a staff attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights representing clients on death row in Alabama and Georgia in state post-conviction and federal habeas proceedings. In 2003, Ms. Buch graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School where she represented indigent clients through the Criminal Justice Institute, was a research assistant to Professors Carol Steiker and Stephen Bright, and was awarded a Kauffman Fellowship. Ms. Buch graduated from the University of Virginia in 1999 with a B.A. in Religious Studies.

Ms. Buch is admitted to practice in New York, Georgia, Alabama and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Ms. Buch can be reached at vanessa@nsbcivilrights.com

NSB and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady Win Landmark Wrongful Death Verdict for Native American Man Fatally Shot by Parks Police

Kibret Markos, “Jury awards $150,000 in punitive damages in shooting death of Ramapough Indian,” Bergen County Record, November 30, 2011

A jury on Wednesday awarded $150,000 in punitive damages to the family of a Ramapough Indian who was fatally shot by a state park ranger five years ago in Mahwah.

With a 7-0 vote, the panel found that former Park Police Officer Chad Walder’s actions were “malicious or wanton” when he drew his gun and shot Emil Mann on April 1, 2006, during a confrontation near Ringwood State Park over ATV riding near Stag Hill.

Lawyers for the Mann family said the finding was more significant than the size of the judgment.

“That is a finding that this family has been waiting for five years,” lawyer Nick Brustin said after the verdict.

Ilann Maazel, another lawyer for the family, said the jurors found that the killing was “completely and absolutely wrong and indefensible.”

“This is a very strong statement by the citizens of Bergen County,” Maazel said.

Mann’s two sons, Emil and Ronnie, and their mother, Charlene DeFreese, hugged each other after the verdict.

Walder and his lawyer, William Finizio, declined to comment.

Jurors had already awarded $2.1 million in compensatory damages to Mann’s family in a verdict Monday, ruling that Walder used unreasonable force.

According to testimony at trial, Walder and his two colleagues were on patrol in the woods that day while several tribal members had gathered for a cookout.

Tribal members and the three park rangers later got into an argument over ATV riding, which is illegal in state parks. The argument eventually became physical when one tribal member attacked one of the park rangers who were trying to arrest him.

Walder was rushing to the aid of that officer when he came face to face with Mann. He said that Mann came at him, yelling and cursing despite his instructions to stop.

Walder said he shot Mann twice after Mann began to scuffle with him and tried to grab his gun while other tribal members circled him and tried to ambush him.

Brustin, however, told jurors during the trial that Mann was unarmed and that Walder made up the story about the scuffle and the ambush to justify his shooting.

Walder was charged with reckless manslaughter and was acquitted after a criminal trial two years ago.

Dwayne Perry, chief of the Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation, said in a statement that he was pleased with the verdict.

“This verdict is small consolation for a family which has suffered for so long, and for the people of the Ramapough Nation who have been damaged and besmirched as a people to justify a wanton killing of an innocent man,” Perry said in the statement, which was released by Lydia Cotz, an attorney for the tribe.

Mann’s family would be able to collect the compensatory damages from the state and its insurer under a law that allows the state to pay for damages incurred by negligent actions of a public employee.

Brustin said it was not clear whether Walder or the state would pay the punitive damages.

Jurors at one point sent a question to Judge Charles E. Powers, asking about the extent to which Walder would be personally responsible for punitive damages. The judge responded that the question was not relevant in determining whether punitive damages should be awarded.

Testimony at trial showed that Walder, 40, and his wife own two homes, two cars and a boat. Walder retired after the Mann shooting and received a full disability pension that will add up to $2.4 million over his lifetime.

Punitive damages are meant to penalize a person at fault and are often not covered by insurers. Public entities are not bound by law to pick up the tab for punitive awards against employees, unless they have agreed in writing to do so.

Such agreements are very rare, said Fort Lee lawyer Nancy Lucianna. She said she has handled more than 50 cases in the past 25 years involving allegations of excessive use of force by police.

“And I have not seen one case in which a public entity paid punitive damages,” she said.

NSB Partner Nick Brustin Selected as a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School

NSB partner Nick Brustin has been selected as a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School for the 2011-12 academic year. The Wasserstein Committee selected Mr. Brustin for his outstanding public service accomplishments and ongoing work at the firm.

Seemona Sumasar Spent 7 Months in Jail, Framed by Ex; Authorities Ignored Evidence of her Innocence

See the video of Seemona Sumasar with Nick Brustin appearing on the Today Show here.

Read more about Seemona Sumasar’s case:

A Revenge Plot So Intricate, the Prosecutors Were Pawns

Dan Bilefsky, New York Times, July 25, 2011

Soon after Seemona Sumasar started dating Jerry Ramrattan, she had an inkling that something might be wrong.
He said he was a police detective, but never seemed to go to work. He seemed obsessed with “C.S.I.,” “Law & Order” and other television police dramas.
About a year after he moved into her house in Queens, their relationship soured. One day, he cornered her, taped her mouth and raped her, she said. Mr. Ramrattan was arrested.
But he soon took his revenge, the authorities said. Drawing on his knowledge of police procedure, gleaned from his time as an informer for law enforcement, he accomplished what prosecutors in New York called one of the most elaborate framing plots that they had ever seen.
One night, Ms. Sumasar was pulled over by the police. Before she could speak, detectives slapped handcuffs on her. “You know you did it,” she said one later shouted at her. “Just admit it.”
Ms. Sumasar, a former Morgan Stanley analyst who was running a restaurant, said she had no idea what that meant. Yet suddenly, she was being treated like a brazen criminal. She was charged with carrying out a series of armed robberies, based on what the police said was a wealth of evidence, including credible witness statements and proof that her car was the getaway vehicle.
In her first extensive interview about her ordeal, she recalled sitting in jail, consumed by one thought: “Jerry is behind this.”
But when she insisted to the authorities that he had set her up, they belittled her claims.
Now, though, they concede that Ms. Sumasar was right — an astonishing turn of events that has transformed her case into one of the most bizarre in the city’s recent history.
They released her from jail last December after seven months, acknowledging that the entire case against her had been concocted by Mr. Ramrattan, officials said.
“We prosecute tens of thousands of cases each year, but in the collective memory, no one has ever seen anything like this before,” said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney.
“Few people have the capacity to pull off a master plot of this magnitude to exact revenge,” Mr. Brown said.
Mr. Ramrattan framed Ms. Sumasar because she would not drop the rape charge, prosecutors said.
And so even as Mr. Ramrattan remained free on bail in the rape case, Ms. Sumasar, who had no prior criminal record, was facing up to 25 years in prison.
Despondent, Ms. Sumasar passed her days behind bars scouring the indictments against her for clues that could help prove her innocence, even as news of lurid crimes that she had not committed were splashed in newspapers.
“From the beginning, I said he made it up,” Ms. Sumasar said. “I never thought my life would become a cop film.”
Ms. Sumasar, 36, is bubbly and petite. She never finished college but used her analytical skills to land six-figure jobs on Wall Street. Yet she acknowledged she can be too trusting.
After her arrest, she lost her restaurant franchise and her house in Far Rockaway went into foreclosure. She was separated from her daughter, Chiara, 12.
Ms. Sumasar is now planning lawsuits against the Police Departments in New York City and in Nassau County, the location of one of her purported robberies, over her arrest. Neither agency would comment.
Mr. Ramrattan never worked as a law enforcement officer, prosecutors say, but he often presented himself as a private investigator.
Mr. Ramrattan, who is being held at Rikers Island, appeared this month in a Queens court, where a judge refused a request for bail and set his trial date on the rape and conspiracy charges for Oct. 3. He has pleaded not guilty to both. He and his supporters are now voicing their own theory of the case: Ms. Sumasar framed him.
“My son is innocent, he was set up,” said Shirley Ramrattan, Mr. Ramrattan’s mother.
Mr. Ramrattan’s lawyer, Frank Kelly, said, “Everything about Ms. Sumasar and her associates will come out.”
Some legal experts say Ms. Sumasar’s story shows how the American justice system can be easily manipulated, with the principle of innocent until proven guilty turned on its head.
Prosecutors countered that the web of false evidence presented by Mr. Ramrattan was so detailed they had little reason to doubt it.
But Anthony Grandinette, Ms. Sumasar’s former lawyer, said law enforcement was negligent.
“Why would a tiny woman with no criminal record, who worked 10 years on Wall Street, randomly hold up people at gunpoint at night dressed as a policewoman?” Mr. Grandinette asked.
Ms. Sumasar, the daughter of an Indian taxi company owner from the South American nation of Guyana, was the embodiment of immigrant success.
When Mr. Ramrattan, dressed in a suit and tie, first entered her restaurant in 2006 and introduced himself as a police detective, Ms. Sumasar, a single mother, recalled being impressed.
The two began dating, and Mr. Ramrattan eventually moved into Ms. Sumasar’s house. At first, he seemed attentive, but she grew suspicious of him. He lied constantly, she said.
“I said to Jerry, ‘You tell so many lies, I think you actually believe what you are saying,’ ” Ms. Sumasar said.
Throughout 2008, she said she begged him to leave but he refused.
After Ms. Sumasar said she was attacked, on March 8, 2009, she pressed rape charges against Mr. Ramrattan, who was arrested and released on bail. Soon after, Mr. Ramrattan sent friends to intimidate her, prosecutors said.
They said that when she would not back down, he vowed to put her away.
The key to his scheme, prosecutors said, was to spread fake clues over time, fooling police into believing that all the evidence pointed to Ms. Sumasar.
They said he coached the supposed victims, driving them past Ms. Sumasar’s house so that they could describe her Jeep Grand Cherokee and showing them her photo so they could pick her out of a police lineup.
The setup began in September 2009, prosecutors said. An illegal immigrant from Trinidad told the police that he had been handcuffed and robbed of $700 by an Indian woman who was disguised as a police officer and had a gun, according to court documents.
Prosecutors said Mr. Ramrattan had persuaded the immigrant to lie, telling him that he could receive a special visa for victims of violent crimes.
Six months later, another man said he had been robbed in Nassau County by two police impersonators and described the main aggressor as an Indian woman about Ms. Sumasar’s height. The man said he had managed to take down the first three letters of the Jeep Grand Cherokee’s New York license plate — AJD.
All the while, Ms. Sumasar had a strong alibi, including cell phone records showing that calls were made from her phone at a casino in Connecticut on the day of the robbery.
But Sheryl Anania, executive assistant district attorney in Nassau County, said Ms. Sumasar’s business was foundering, so she appeared to have a motive.
The final fake crime was conjured in May 2010, officials said, when an acquaintance of Mr. Ramrattan said she had been held up by a couple posing as police officers. She said they were driving a Grand Cherokee, but she gave a full Florida license plate number.
She said she heard the pair call each other by name — “Seem” and “Elvis.” Elvis was the nickname of another former boyfriend of Ms. Sumasar, who owned the Jeep.
When the police looked into the Florida plate number, they found that the day after the purported March robbery, the title and the plate for the Cherokee had been transferred from Elvis to Ms. Sumasar’s sister in Florida.
Ms. Sumasar, who holds a Florida driver’s license, had driven the car to Florida to register it. To the police, she seemed to be covering her tracks.
With all the evidence pointing to Ms. Sumasar, the police arrested her. Bail was set at $1 million.
Prosecutors said the scheme unraveled in December 2010 — just weeks before Ms. Sumasar was to go on trial — when an informer told the police that Mr. Ramrattan had staged the plot. The informer gave detectives a number for a cellphone owned by Mr. Ramrattan.
When they checked phone records, they discovered multiple calls to the false witnesses, who confessed to the police. They were charged with perjury.
Today, Ms. Sumasar is trying to rebuild her life.
She checks the Rikers Web site frequently to make sure Mr. Ramrattan has not been released or escaped. She once paid for purchases with cash but now uses only credit cards, so there is a paper trail attesting to her whereabouts.
“From the beginning I was presumed guilty — not innocent,” she said. “I felt like I never had a chance.”
“I can never have faith in justice in this country again.”

Deskovic Settles, Urges Audit of Westchester Medical Examiner

Fernanda Santos, “$6.5 Million Settlement in Wrongful Conviction,” New York Times, April 13, 2011

Jeffrey Deskovic spent half of his life in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit, but it was only this week, four and a half years after his release, that he received some measure of justice: a $6.5 million settlement with Westchester County on a federal civil-rights lawsuit stemming from his wrongful conviction.

Mr. Deskovic was convicted of raping, beating and strangling a high school classmate in Peekskill, N.Y., at age 17. He was 32 at the time of his release, exonerated by DNA testing of the semen retrieved from the victim, which was later linked to another man.

A test done on the same semen sample cleared Mr. Deskovic at the time of his arrest, but a forensic expert testifying for the prosecution said it was because the victim had had sex with another man before Mr. Deskovic raped her. That theory and Mr. Deskovic’s confession, extracted after hours of interrogation, played major roles in his conviction.

The settlement was unanimously approved by the Westchester County Board of Legislators late Monday, on behalf of the county, its chief medical examiner at the time and the forensic expert, Dr. Louis Roh.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Deskovic and his lawyers, from the Manhattan law firm of Neufeld Scheck and Brustin, said they hoped that other cases in which Dr. Roh had testified would be re-examined, and any wrongdoing corrected.

Another portion of the lawsuit, directed against the police officers who investigated the crime and coerced the confession used as key evidence in his trial, is unresolved.

Mr. Deskovic is set to receive $4 million this year and the remainder of the settlement in 2012. His mother, Linda McGarr, who was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, will receive $250,000. Mr. Deskovic is now 37, living in New York City, finishing a master’s degree at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and traveling the country to tell his story. He said he no longer played a lot of Ping-Pong, a game he learned — and learned to like — in prison.

“There are a lot of things in my life, socially, that I still need to put together,” Mr. Deskovic said in an interview. “My background, what happened to me, it’s still a hindrance.”

NSB Secures Unanimous Ruling from NY’s Highest Court: Warney Wins, Breaks New Ground for Exonerees in False Confession Cases

Gary Craig, “Douglas Warney’s bid for restitution is restored,” Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, March 31, 2011.

Rochester police likely coerced a false confession from Douglas Warney, a city man who spent more than nine years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, New York’s highest court ruled today.

The New York Court of Appeals ruled that a Court of Claims judge wrongly dismissed Warney’s bid for restitution from the state for his wrongful imprisonment.

The ruling means that Warney can renew his bid for restitution. That determination could help others who are seeking payment for convictions based on false confessions.

He was convicted in 1997 for the Rochester murder of William Beason, a slaying authorities now know was committed by another man.

In New York, the wrongly convicted can seek restitution through the Court of Claims and a state statute designed to award those who suffered an “unjust conviction and imprisonment.” The law does block restitution from those whose conduct caused the conviction.

In 2008, Court of Claims Judge Renee Forgensi Minarik dismissed Warney’s claim against the state. She determined that he had not proven his statement was coerced and that his actions were in part responsible for a jury’s guilty verdict against him.

The Court of Appeals determined that the evidence in Warney’s legal papers clearly point to a coercive interrogation, since he provided details of the crime that only the killer could know.

“The allegations describe how no member of the public other than the perpetrator could have known all the details contained in the confession — whether negligently or through intentional manipulation, police misconduct led to the inclusion of these details in Warney’s statement,” the court wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Court of Appeals Judge Robert Smith wrote that Warney’s case is so “compelling” that it should not be a signal to Court of Claims judges to uphold “much weaker ones.” Restitution cases with “allegations implausible or unconvincing on their face” should be dismissed, Smith wrote.

However, Warney’s allegations clearly point to coercion, Smith wrote.

“ … A confession cannot fairly be called ‘uncoerced’ that results from the sort of calculated manipulation that appears to be present here — even if the police did not actually beat or torture the confessor, or threaten to do so,” he wrote.

In an unusual step, the court even ordered that the state pay Warney’s legal costs.

Relying largely on the confession, a jury convicted Warney in 1997 for the murder of Beason, who was stabbed to death in his apartment. Warney’s lawyers insisted that the statement was full of errors; prosecutors maintained that Warney made statements that only the killer could know.

Warney suffered from AIDS-related dementia, his lawyers said then.

The Innocence Project, which uses DNA testing to try to free the wrongly convicted, in recent years pushed for new testing of evidence from the murder scene.

Meanwhile, the District Attorney’s Office had the blood from the crime scene tested, and determined that Eldred Johnson Jr., a man imprisoned for murder, may have killed Beason.

Questioned in prison, Johnson admitted to the murder and has since pleaded guilty to Beason’s killing.

In 2006, a judge freed Warney at the request of prosecutors.

“My expectation is that the state of New York will want to settle Mr. Warney’s case now,” said Peter Neufeld, a partner with the New York City law firm of Neufeld Scheck & Brustin, LLP, which argued Warney’s case.

Warney said today that he had grown doubtful his case would proceed. A regional appellate court also sided with Minarik’s ruling, judging that his case should be dismissed. “I am so happy,” Warney said. ” … What they did to me, it could happen to you, it could happen to me. It could happen to anybody at any given moment.”

“This wall that they’ve been hiding behind for all these years to avoid paying Doug … that has now been eliminated by the Court of Appeals,” said Neufeld, who is also an Innocence Project founder.

Neufeld said the ruling may ripple across the country, since other states have modeled their wrongful conviction restitution statutes after New York’s.

NSB Secures Largest Individual Settlement in NYC History

John Marzulli and Larry McShane, Daily News, June 3, 2010

The man framed for murder by “Mafia Cop” Louis Eppolito won a record $9.9 million settlement from the city on Thursday – and promptly wished his jailed tormentor continued good health.

“I hope he has a long life in prison and suffers,” Barry Gibbs said after the unprecedented award. “Nothing is worse than being in a cell 23 hours in a day.”

Gibbs, 62, spoke from experience: He spent nearly 19 years behind bars after Eppolito schemed to jail him in the 1986 strangling of a Brooklyn prostitute.

The payout was the largest civil rights settlement in city history, topping the previous mark of $8 million paid to Brooklyn handyman Franklyn Waldron in 2004 after he was shot and paralyzed by a city cop.
“The settlement amount speaks loudly about Barry’s innocence and the Police Department’s failure to take action against Eppolito,” said lawyer Nick Brustin of the firm Neufeld, Scheck & Brustin.

The deal came as Gibbs prepared for Monday jury selection in his $18 million lawsuit against Eppolito and the city – $1 million for each full year behind bars.

“This is a miracle for me,” said Gibbs, a Rockaways resident now battling colon cancer. “I can go forward with my life now.”

The city Corporation Counsel said the settlement was “in the best interest of all parties.”

Negotiations to resolve the lawsuit began in the last three days. Last year, Gibbs collected $1.9 million from the state in a separate suit.

The 61-year-old Eppolito, one of the most corrupt cops in NYPD history, is serving a life sentence after his conviction for selling his detective’s shield to the mob.

The beefy ex-cop also coerced a witness into identifying Gibbs as the killer of prostitute Virginia Robertson.

At a 63rd Precinct lineup, the witness selected the clean-shaven, 5-feet-11 Gibbs after earlier describing the suspect as 5 inches shorter with a mustache.

Gibbs’ lawyers theorized Eppolito was trying to keep the heat off a mob associate suspected in the slaying. Gibbs, insisting he was innocent, was sentenced to serve 20 years to life.

He was finally freed in September 2005 after the Las Vegas arrests of Eppolito and crooked cohort Stephen Caracappa – dubbed the “Mafia Cops” after serving as Luchese family hitmen while on the NYPD payroll.

The Robertson case file was found in Eppolito’s home, eventually leading to Gibbs’ release.

NSB Finds Evidence, Prevails for Betty Anne Waters in Brother’s Wrongful Conviction

Martha Neil, ABA Journal, September 18, 2009

A high-school dropout with two children who went on to get her general educational development certificate, graduate from college and earn a juris doctor degree so that she could represent her brother in a wrongful conviction case has now won $10.7 million in damages from a federal judge in Massachusetts.

But the award by U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. was a bittersweet win for Betty Anne Waters. She sued as the executrix of the estate of her brother, Kenneth, who died in an accident only six months after his murder conviction was vacated in 2001, reports the National Law Journal in an article reprinted in New York Lawyer (reg. req.).

The story of her battle to overturn Kenneth Waters’ wrongful conviction and his 18-year prison stint is being told in a movie starring Hillary Swank that is now in post-production, the legal publication recounts. It says the judge considered Waters’ lengthy incarceration, his emotional distress and his injuries and illness as a result of his wrongful conviction in rendering the award.

The town of Ayer, Mass., and five of its six insurers partially settled for $3.4 million earlier this year the civil rights lawsuit filed on Kenneth Waters’ behalf.

Partner Debi Cornwall of Neufeld Scheck & Brustin helped represent Betty Anne Waters in the suit. Cornwall says Waters intends to pursue the sixth insurer for the balance of the $10.7 million judgment and other damages, the NLJ reports.

Lawyers at Boston’s Kopelman and Paige, which represented the the town of Ayers and individual police officer defendants, didn’t respond to the National Law Journal’s requests for comment.

After the earlier partial settlement, the defendants did not contest their liability in the case, according to the NLJ.

NSB Negotiates State Settlement for Steven Barnes

Rocco LaDuca, Utica Observer-Dispatch, Jan. 7, 2011

Not much has changed yet for Steven Barnes after recently receiving a check for $3.5 million from the state as payback for all those years he was wrongfully blamed for killing 16-year-old Kimberly Simon in 1985.

The humble Marcy man still goes to work everyday helping youths through Oneida County Workforce Development, and he still eats the same turkey sandwich and homemade soup his mother packs daily for lunch.

Having spent more than 19 years behind bars, 44-year-old Barnes said he is just grateful to be enjoying all the day-to-day routines that most people take for granted. And while the multi-million dollar settlement he received through the state Court of Claims last month for his wrongful imprisonment will certainly make his life easier, Barnes said it’s not nearly enough to make up for lost time.

“I’m glad it’s over with, but after spending 20 years of your life in prison, I don’t think you could ever put a figure on that – but this helps,” Barnes said Thursday. “Now I can go on with my life, enjoy my life and live my life, which I couldn’t live for all those years.”

Former state Court of Claims Judge Norman Siegel in Utica awarded the settlement on Oct. 8, but Barnes and his mother, Sylvia Bouchard, wanted news of this windfall to remain hushed for as long as possible. On Thursday, Barnes’ New York City-based attorney, Debi Cornwall, finally disclosed the settlement.

Now, Barnes is investing the money while he considers how he would like to spend the non-taxed cash, including the prospect of buying or building a home in the Mohawk Valley.

“I’m not thinking about leaving the area, so I’ll probably just buy a house and take a few vacations. I always wanted to go to Hawaii or the Bahamas,” Barnes explained. “But I don’t want to quit my job because it’s part of my life; it’s part of my routine to get up in the morning and go to work. I don’t like to sit around, so it will keep me busy.”

Barnes also said he’d like to buy his mother something special or take her on a vacation, but Bouchard said she doesn’t need any luxuries like that. After spending years working with the Innocence Project until recent DNA tests proved Barnes didn’t rape Simon, Bouchard said she’s received everything she wanted when the shackles fell off her son in November 2008.

“There’s not enough money in the world that would mean more to me than having Steve’s freedom,” Bouchard said. “He stops in every morning at 6 a.m. to check on me, and when my son walks through the door, you can’t put a price on that.”

Although the entire family treats Barnes like “King Steve” whenever he is around, Bouchard said the money hasn’t made him extravagant. When Barnes received the money, he actually thought of buying a used snowmobile instead of an expensive new one, Bouchard said.

“He’s just the same loveable son that I raised,” Bouchard said. “And I couldn’t be prouder to be his mother – millionaire or not.”

Bouchard does, however, have a copy of the $3.5 million check from New York State framed in the window of her Marcy home, she said. Bouchard also knows that some people may try getting close to Barnes knowing that he gained so much money, but she said she’s not worried about him being taken advantage of.

“There are always the vultures out there, but Steve has been home two years now and he’s smart enough to figure out who his friends are and who aren’t,” Bouchard said.

In the meantime, the Oneida County District Attorney’s Office has spent the past two years trying to find out who really killed Simon in September 1985 and why the initial investigation 25 years ago failed to undercover to actual perpetrator.

The settlement was agreed to by the state Attorney General’s Office, but officials could not be reached to comment Thursday afternoon.

Barnes’ attorney, Debi Cornwall, a partner with the firm Neufeld Scheck & Brustin, said no amount of money will ever fully compensate Barnes for the years he spent in prison. But, she noted, Barnes ultimately received more money for each year he spent in prison than most other wrongfully convicted people have received – about $184,000 each year for Barnes versus the standard $100,000.

“I think that the state of New York saw this as an obvious injustice and understood how sympathetic Steve is and, as the judge said, what strong character Steve has,” Cornwall said Thursday.

In court, Judge Siegel emphasized that he did everything he could to get Barnes’ matter settled as quickly and as fairly as possible so that Barnes could move on with his life. He also credited Barnes for never giving up his claims of innocence, no matter how challenging the obstacles had seemed.

“I would hope and pray that you can look forward rather than look back and that you can continue to be the productive and responsible citizen that I understand you have been since you left prison,” Siegel told Barnes, according to a transcript.

“I think that it has been a positive experience for other people in the community to see that even though an injustice may have been done to you, it doesn’t justify them acting in an irresponsible way,” Siegel added.