In court papers they are called the “Scarcella Lists” — compilations of cases involving a retired New York City homicide detective whose problematic work on homicides in the 1980s and 1990s was cited in numerous wrongful convictions that have cost the city and state millions.
For years, prosecutors did not disclose the broad scope of cases that the detective, Louis Scarcella, may have tainted, despite interest from lawyers and exoneration advocates.
But thanks to a simple computer slip-up, the door recently cracked open to reveal details of dozens of homicide cases that were not scrutinized amid a decadelong re-evaluation of Mr. Scarcella’s cases that led to convictions.
In January, prosecutors mistakenly sent a large, unredacted computer file with the Scarcella lists to the lawyers who represent three men who had served long prison terms after being wrongfully convicted in one of the detective’s cases.
The 524-page PDF included names, docket numbers, case status and other information that could help identify problematic Scarcella cases, said Ronald Kuby, one of the two lawyers who received it. The lists were created by the Conviction Review Unit in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which has spent the past decade reviewing many of Mr. Scarcella’s homicide cases. His overturned cases, some of which left wrongfully convicted people in prison for decades, have cost New York taxpayers more than $100 million in settlements and claims.
Mr. Scarcella, who retired in 1999, has not been charged with any crimes despite official findings of bad practices, and he has insisted he did nothing wrong. He gave his fullest public accounting yet in a new podcast called The Burden, in which he insisted he was simply one of many cogs in a system ratcheted up to rein in rampant crime during a time when murder rates were several times higher than they are today.
Mr. Kuby and David Shanies, the other lawyer who received the file, are contesting a motion prosecutors filed last month asking a judge to order the file to be returned. They declined requests to share the file’s contents for this article, citing an agreement with prosecutors pending the judge’s decision. But their court papers include some case totals and a description of some of the contents of spreadsheets.
A “master list” included 319 cases, and another titled “Any Case Where a Witness or Listed Police Officer was Named Scarcella” had 478 entries.
Oren Yaniv, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, said some numbers were an overcount. The master list has duplicate entries, and the other includes people named Scarcella who are not the detective, he said.
The actual number of cases involving Mr. Scarcella is 235, which includes the 77 murder trial convictions that the office’s Conviction Review Unit has flagged for review, Mr. Yaniv said. He added that most reviews had been completed and the convictions upheld.
The remaining 158 Scarcella cases are mostly homicides that resulted in acquittals, dismissals and about 90 plea bargains — none of which get automatic conviction reviews by the office, Mr. Yaniv said. Historically, roughly a third of all Brooklyn homicide cases end in plea bargains, he said.
“It is not feasible to initiate and conduct a review of cases that ended with an acquittal, a dismissal or a guilty plea without the defendant’s participation,” Mr. Yaniv said.
But Mr. Kuby said the numbers were still troubling indications that Mr. Scarcella could be involved in other cases that should be reinvestigated and possibly vacated. Innocence groups say more than 10 percent of people who have taken plea bargains were innocent.
“We know substantial numbers of people have been proven to be innocent despite pleading guilty, and it’s usually because of their fear of police perjury,” Mr. Kuby said, adding that even dismissals and acquittals could lead to discoveries that prosecutors and juries saw obvious flaws early on in Mr. Scarcella’s work.
Mr. Yaniv said the district attorney’s office would continue its policy of investigating cases from “any other claim of an unjust conviction, including guilty pleas.”
A lawyer for Mr. Scarcella, Joel S. Cohen, who worked as a prosecutor in Brooklyn during Mr. Scarcella’s career, said there were certain detectives who were known as being “not entirely reliable,” but that “Detective Scarcella was at the other end of the spectrum.”
“He was highly respected and always considered a skilled professional,” Mr. Cohen said, adding that “the unwarranted assault on his reputation over the past 12 years has been a nightmare for him and his family. His reputation is shot. He gets spit on in the street.”
Mr. Kuby and Mr. Shanies wound up with the Scarcella file because they subpoenaed information from Brooklyn prosecutors to include with compensation claims on behalf of their clients: James Irons, Thomas Malik and Vincent Ellerbe, who were wrongfully convicted of burning a subway token clerk alive in 1995 in the notorious “Money Train” case. A judge cleared their convictions in 2022, citing Mr. Scarcella’s shaky and inconsistent detective work.
Prosecutors sent the Scarcella file to the lawyers before realizing that their extensive redactions outlined in red had not been blacked out. Mr. Shanies’s office notified prosecutors that the document contained “unapplied redactions” but declined their request to return it. Prosecutors then filed a motion asking a judge to order that the document be returned.
In court papers, prosecutors said that while the file might offer a “sneak peek” into private material, it was nonetheless an obvious draft document and privileged information that is outside the scope of the lawyers’ subpoena and irrelevant to their case.
Innocence advocates like Derrick Hamilton say they have “worked with whatever we could” to find other people like himself whose convictions involved Mr. Scarcella.
“It’s just a mockery that they haven’t turned over the list and made public every case he ever worked on,” said Mr. Hamilton, whose conviction for a 1991 killing was overturned after a 23-year prison stretch during which he worked with other inmates to fight convictions involving Mr. Scarcella.
He said that while the review unit’s work was laudable, he was skeptical that the unit had identified all wrongful convictions involving Mr. Scarcella.
“I think they’re getting tired of paying out for his cases,” he said, “so the D.A. is very selective what they reveal and what they reverse.”
The city’s Law Department typically provides counsel to police officers named along with the city in civil cases, but it has refused to pay for Mr. Scarcella’s representation in two pending “Money Train” wrongful conviction lawsuits. The Police Department’s detectives’ union has stepped in, calling Mr. Scarcella a good detective who “has been dragged through the mud by agenda-driven lawyers.”
The Conviction Review Unit was one of the first such units in the country and is seen as a model of reform. It often vacates several convictions a year. Since 2014, it has overturned 37 convictions, almost all for murder, more than any other conviction unit in New York City and almost the entire country.
Mr. Scarcella’s cases account for a third of those vacated cases, and judges have overturned another handful of his cases. At least 17 people whose convictions were tied to the detective’s work have had their convictions overturned after serving a total of more than 250 years in prison, according to the National Exonerations Registry.
