Sheldon Thomas- How He Was Unjustly Sent To Prison For Nearly 20 years

A man from Brooklyn who was wrongly convicted of a 2004 murder was let out of jail nearly 20 years after he was wrongly identified in a photo array.

Inside Story

Sheldon Thomas, who is now 35, and Dalton Walters, who was 24 at the time, were both from East Flatbush. They were both arrested and found guilty of killing 14-year-old Anderson Bercy in Brooklyn on Christmas Eve 2004.

A 2004 New York Times article said that Bercy was shot while walking home on Snyder Avenue around 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve. His 15-year-old friend Kadeem Drummond was also hit in the shoulder. Two people from a gang in a white car shot and killed Bercy.

Two days prior, Walters went up to both Bercy and Drummond. He got into an argument with Drummond, but Bercy stopped him. The DA's report said Walters then told the two that they were messing with the wrong people and that they should "watch themselves."

Nearly 20 years later, the Brooklyn District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit said that Thomas' conviction was wrong because another 17-year-old with the same name had actually been involved in the murder.

At the time, the case detective had asked for the defendant's previous arrest to be unsealed so that his photo could be used in the array. From police databases, they also got a picture of a different Sheldon Thomas.

When shown to a witness, Aliyah Charles, identified the wrong Thomas with '90 percent certainty,' the DA said. Then, the detectives went to the wrong Thomas' house to arrest him, even though his picture wasn't even in the array.

The witness later identified Thomas in a lineup - successfully identifying two separate men as the same person.  

During a pre-trial hearing in June 2006, Detective Robert Reedy admitted under cross-examination that the defendant's photo had not been in the lineup. This showed that the wrong photo ID had been used.

The judge nonetheless found that there was probable cause to arrest Thomas based on 'verified information from unknown callers' and the fact that he supposedly resembled the other Thomas, investigators said.

Thomas was found guilty of second-degree murder and other crimes and given a prison sentence of anywhere from 25 years to life.

Investigators from the Conviction Review Unit re-interviewed witnesses and found that the detectives had harassed Thomas after his earlier gun arrest. They also coached a witness to say that Thomas was one of the shooters in the Bercy killing because they "wanted to arrest the defendant."

Thomas was supposed to go to court Thursday(9th March ) in front of Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Matthew J. D'Emic. In its report, the DA's office said that the conviction should be thrown out and the case shouldn't be tried again because the evidence was bad.

The Brooklyn DA's office said that the mistaken identification was a "mistake that was first hidden and then explained away during the proceedings" because "detectives were determined to arrest the defendant and used the faulty identification procedure as a pretext."

He was also denied his right to due process when the prosecution kept going even after the wrong identification was found. This made his conviction very unfair. DA Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.

The case was looked at again by the Conviction Review Unit of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, led by Eric Gonzalez. When he met with Thomas in court, Gonzalez said he was sorry.

Thomas said he forgives the NYPD detective, witnesses, and others who helped put him in jail for the murder of 14-year-old Anderson Bercy, whose real killer is still unknown.

References and Further Reading;

Brooklyn man, 35, is freed from jail after nearly 20 years when incorrect photo array led to him being convicted of 2004 murder of 14-year-old boy he never committed

Conviction vacated for man wrongfully imprisoned due to photo lineup mistake: 'I've waited a long time'