For a Respected Prosecutor, An Unpardonable Failure

Evidence of a convicted murderer’s possible innocence sat buried in a case file for more than two decades. Now, a prosecutor in Brooklyn will have to answer for the mistake.

Update 06/10/2014 11:54 a.m.: As of last week, James Leeper was no longer employed by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. A spokeswoman for the office would not provide further comment as to why his employment ceased after 27 years of service. He’d previously been suspended after he missed a critical proceeding in a May murder trial due to his drinking.

On the afternoon of July 18, 1990, James Leeper, a newly minted homicide prosecutor in Brooklyn, had to make a challenging closing argument. The man he had charged with murder had mounted a substantial defense—offering plane tickets and video footage indicating he had been vacationing at Disney World when a man named Darryl Rush was shot dead in front of a Brooklyn housing project. Leeper acknowledged to the jury that it seemed like the "perfect alibi."

Nonetheless, Leeper confronted the defense straight on: Yes, the defendant, a man named Jonathan Fleming, could have been in Florida around the time of the murder, Leeper conceded to the jury. But Fleming had ample opportunity to fly back to New York, kill Rush and return to his family vacation, Leeper argued. In fact, Leeper told the jury, there were 53 possible airline flights Fleming could have taken to do just that.

Leeper's presentation won the day. The jury returned a guilty verdict. Fleming, 27, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
It took 24 years, but eventually it became clear that there had been much more to Fleming's alibi defense, and that Leeper had failed to disclose it to the jury.

The original case file from 1990 contained a time-stamped receipt showing that Fleming had paid an Orlando hotel phone bill just hours before Rush's murder. The file also contained a letter from the Orlando Police Department informing Brooklyn detectives that Fleming had been seen at the hotel around the time of the killing. By law, Leeper was obligated to turn that material over to Fleming's lawyer. But he had disclosed none of it.

Read more at http://www.propublica.org/article/for-a-respected-prosecutor-an-unpardon...