A New York man accused of murdering a bodega worker is set to have his conviction overturned after spending almost 35 years behind bars.
Detroy Livingston, 59, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after a 1986 trial found him guilty of a murder that took place four years earlier at a grocery store in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
He was paroled in 2021 after serving more than three decades of his lengthy sentence.
But a reinvestigation has since found that the sole witness who testified that Livingston had shot the victim was “highly unreliable” because she had given contradictory statements and was high on crack cocaine when she allegedly witnessed the murder.
“This old conviction was predicated on the testimony of a single witness who, based on a reinvestigation by my Conviction Review Unit (CRU), should have never been called to testify at trial,” District Attorney Gonzalez said in a statement on Friday.
“Her myriad inconsistent statements and newly discovered crack habit undermine this conviction and it must be reversed.”
Jairam Gangaram was fatally shot when four men robbed a small grocery store he was working in on December 11, 1982. A second employee was also shot but survived his injuries.
O’Brien was convicted of killing Gangaram based on the testimony of one woman, who was 19 at the time, and claimed she saw him shoot the bodega worker. She also claimed to have witnessed his alleged accomplice with marijuana bags with a stamp she had previously noticed in that store.
However, Gangaram’s own daughter did not believe O’Brien was responsible for her father’s death and pushed for the case to be reinvestigated.
CRU granted her request and ultimately found that the witness had “little recollection regarding the case but stated at the time she ‘was on crack, hard’” which authorities said contradicted her hearing testimony that she had only smoked marijuana.
According to officials, an analysis showed that she was “inconsistent about the defendant’s role or whether he was involved at all” and her testimony was “physically implausible”.
“She claimed to have hidden behind a dumpster right outside the store and looked in through the window, but the window was largely blocked by objects (based on a crime scene photo that was never shown to the jury), and a security gate was almost certainly rolled down,” the DA’s office said in a statement.
The alleged accomplice was convicted of attempted murder and weapon possession based on testimony from the surviving bodega employee.
“Given all of these findings, the CRU concluded that the witness should have never been called to the stand and, since she was the only link between the defendant and the crime, the conviction should be vacated, and the indictment dismissed.”
Livingston appeared in court at 11 a.m. on Friday before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Matthew D’Emic.
