Lawyer exonerated for voter fraud to sue ex-Brooklyn DA Hynes
Charles Hynes will be the target of a $25 million malicious prosecution suit.
(IP, MICHAEL/FREELANCE NYDN)
A Brooklyn political gadfly, wielding a long-hidden document as proof, plans a $25 million malicious prosecution suit against ex-prosecutor Charles J. Hynes.
John O’Hara filed a notice of claim Thursday against the former district attorney, the city and other Brooklyn prosecutors barely a month after his exoneration in a 1997 voter fraud case.
“In an effort to obtain O’Hara’s unlawful conviction, they fabricated statements and evidence (and) coerced and intimidated witnesses to provide false testimony,” the notice of claim charged.
O’Hara’s case is based in part on a shocking handwritten document delivered to the defense when the DA’s office surrendered three boxes of evidence in the summer of 2015.
Before the start of O'Hara's unprecedented third trial, ex-prosecutor John O'Mara allegedly scrawled a note about how offering the defendant a plea bargain could help avoid a future lawsuit.
“Discussed the law ... (the deal) would foreclose lawsuit for malicious prosecution,” read his handwritten notes.
The proposed deal was a guilty plea to a charge that would disappear from O’Hara’s previously clean criminal record in six months.
O’Hara was eventually prosecuted on the charge after an unprecedented three trials.
“They kept having trials to avoid a lawsuit,” O’Hara told the Daily News. “That's why I was the first person in Brooklyn to be tried three times on the same charges. For 20 years it worked.”
A spokeswoman for the NYC Law Department said they “will review the claim.”
No comments:
Post a Comment