ALBANY — A New York City man who was indicted on manslaughter charges that were later dismissed has filed a federal lawsuit alleging Troy city detectives wrongly implicated him in the homicide by misrepresenting a witness’s account they knew was untruthful and intentionally withholding exculpatory evidence from a grand jury that reviewed the case.
Jeremy Skeen, 37, and a woman he had been dating for three years, had allegedly been stalked, threatened and menaced multiple times prior to the March 2020 slaying that ended with Skeen fatally stabbing a suspected street gang member who was also armed with a knife, according to the lawsuit.
The civil claim accuses Troy police and Troy Housing Authority officials of failing to act on complaints from Skeen and his then-girlfriend, Destiny McCarty, that her ex-boyfriend and father of her two children, Andres McClenos, had been stalking the couple at her apartment complex where McClenos had been banned due to prior incidents. Those allegations included burglarizing the residence of a neighbor of McCarty’s, according to the federal lawsuit.
Skeen told police that he had defended himself with a kitchen knife when McClenos had menaced him and McCarty while armed with a knife. Skeen was indicted a few days after the incident on charges of first-degree manslaughter and first-degree assault, which the lawsuit says could have resulted in him spending decades in prison if he had been convicted. Prosecutors had offered Skeen a plea deal to receive five years probation with no prison time, but his defense attorney, Shane Hug, filed numerous motions to obtain all of the evidence in the case after he said prosecutors had been slow to turn over those records.
During that process, Hug discovered the videotaped interview of a witness who had changed her story and it would lead to the prosecution’s case unraveling.
That interview was…
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