Caption
Close
Troy
A 29-year-old Bronx man languished for more than two years under house arrest before the Rensselaer County district attorney’s office said Tuesday it would not appeal a judge’s ruling that critical prosecution evidence in an attempted homicide case was inadmissible.
State Supreme Court Justice Andrew Ceresia dismissed the attempted second-degree murder, weapons and burglary charges from a 2010 Domino’s Pizza holdup against Paul Walker Jr. with prejudice meaning the case cannot be filed again.
“There weren’t any grounds to appeal,” District Attorney Joel Abelove said.
Questions about potential speedy trial statute violations arose in the last few weeks as the case lingered without resolution.
Ceresia ruled Feb. 3, 2015 that search warrants for DNA evidence from Walker and his cell phone were illegally obtained and that a New York Police Department detective’s testimony was not credible. The prosecution filed its notice of appeal on Feb. 6, 2015.
“I don’t why they took so long. This was a clear-court decision that didn’t need two years to be reviewed,” said William Roberts, the assistant public defender who represented Walker.
“The police officer was lying on the stand to save a bad search,” Roberts said.
Walker’s 2011 criminal conviction relied on evidence connected to the cellphone allegedly belonging to Walker in an unrelated earlier robbery of a Queens bodega. This opened the way for the prosecution to obtain a DNA sample that linked Walker to the Troy robbery.
Walker was convicted by a county court jury and sentenced to 25 years in prison for attempted second-degree murder and other charges for the shooting of the Hoosick Street pizzeria manager in the face.
The defense appealed the admission of the evidence and in a 2013 State Appellate Division ruling overturned Walker’s 2011 conviction in the robbery. The case was sent back to county court.
Roberts had told the district attorney’s office recently week that he would file for a speedy trial violation, called a “30-30” motion, to dismiss the charges, according to Walker’s case file in county court.
“There were not any speedy trial deadlines,” Abelove said.
The district attorney said his office had proceeded properly and diligently in handling the review of the case for appeal. He said he was not certain why the matter lasted as long as it did.
In 2016, Abelove announced his office was instituting a new review process to ensure cases were not dismissed due to not being presented to a grand jury in a timely fashion. The Times Union reported of several instances in which this had happened with felony charges being dismissed in court.
Walker wore an ankle monitoring device for the last two years while he waited for the district attorney’s office to file its appeal.
The monitoring device was removed from Walker’s leg Tuesday by the county Probation Department after Ceresia dismissed the charges.
“He spent five years incarcerated and two years on house arrest all because his Fourth Amendment rights of unlawful search and seizure were violated,” Roberts said.
kcrowe@timesunion.com • 518- 454-5084 • @KennethCrowe
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
