A man who spent 26 years in prison for a Bronx shooting he has always maintained he didn’t commit is suing the NYPD officers whose investigation put him away.
In a lawsuit filed last week, Norberto Peets accused police of framing him, hiding exculpatory evidence from the grand jury and losing a key piece of physical evidence that could have cleared him of wrongdoing.
“Mr. Peets suffered severe emotional and mental anguish and pain as a result of being punished for crimes he did not commit,” the lawsuit states. Peets’ attorney, Gabriel Harvis, declined to comment on the lawsuit or to make his client available for an interview while the litigation is pending.
The NYPD declined to speak about pending litigation, and the city’s legal department did not respond to a request for comment. The lead officers named in the complaint, Claude Staten and William Fullam, and a spokesperson for the Police Benevolent Association also could not be reached for comment. Staten is still an officer in the 46th precinct in the Bronx, according to department records, while Fullam is no longer with the NYPD.
The case joins a growing group of lawsuits filed against NYPD officers involved in wrongful conviction cases from the 1990s, when a mayoral commission uncovered rampant corruption and misconduct within the NYPD as crime reached record levels in the city. Last year, three of the four most expensive payouts for NYPD-related lawsuits — totaling $35.5 million — went to men who spent decades in prison for convictions from the 1990s that were later vacated.
Peets’ lawsuit paints a similar picture of officers who his lawsuit claims used shoddy tactics to solve an attempted murder of police and civilians, even if it meant convicting the wrong person. It also criticizes the department’s evidence preservation practices, which recently came under scrutiny after a fire severely damaged a department’s warehouse, destroying scores of materials that experts worry could make it
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