A Manhattan judge on Wednesday overturned the convictions of two men who each spent decades behind bars after being found guilty in 1987 of killing a French tourist in Times Square.
Justice Stephen Antignani ruled that Eric Smokes and David Warren should never have been convicted of a fatal mugging during that year’s annual New Year’s celebration in Midtown. The judge also tossed the original indictment against the men, meaning they won’t be tried again.
After dismissing the charges, Antignani noted, “it will never give you back the years you lost.”
Loved ones who filled the seats of the courtroom gallery cheered and applauded as the judge announced his decision. Smokes sat up straight in his chair. Warren smiled and turned his face to the sky.
The judge’s ruling ends a nearly four-decade fight for the two friends to clear their names in a crime they say police were desperate to solve because they wanted to signal to tourists that the city was safe enough to visit.
The outcome is also one of several high-profile convictions from the 1980s and 1990s that judges have recently overturned as it becomes more common for prosecutors to reexamine potentially wrongful convictions.
“We knew we wasn’t going to give up,” Smokes said outside the courthouse in Lower Manhattan, as Warren stood quietly at his side. “We was going to fight until there was no more breath in us — no more fight in us.”
The quest to clear their names
Around midnight on Jan. 1, 1987, someone mugged and assaulted French tourist Jean Casse during the New Year’s Eve festivities in Times Square, according to court records. The 71-year-old tourist hit his head and died shortly after, the New York Times reported.
Smokes and Warren, who at the time were 19 and 16, respectively, were arrested and charged with murder and robbery, prosecutors said.
During a trial in the summer of 1987, a handful of teenagers took the stand and accused Smokes and Warren of the fatal mugging, court records show….
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