This story is Part II in last week’s wrongful convictions story. Read here.
The dramatized injustices against the Exonerated Five shown in the Netflix miniseries “When They See Us” sickened Steve Lopez’s daughter. But little did she know her father was the sixth defendant, a truth he kept from her until his conviction was overturned in 2022.
The Central Park jogger case entered the history books long before Lopez’s exoneration as arguably the nation’s most famous wrongful conviction case. Five Black and brown boys between age 14 and 16 were arrested and wrongly convicted for the rape and assault of Trish Melli. Police interrogated them for hours without their parents while the media and public held their own trial by racist attacks and calls for punishment. The actual culprit was serial rapist Matias Reyes, who later confessed and provided a DNA match to exonerate the Five in 2002.
Lopez waited more than two decades longer for his exoneration. He was 15 when police arrested him and 48 when his conviction was vacated.
While his wrongful conviction was ostensibly for the same crime as the Exonerated Five’s, on paper, Lopez pleaded guilty of robbing another jogger to avoid going to trial and facing the more serious charges. By the time he found a lawyer willing to look over his case, People v. Tiger affirmed that a guilty plea could not be vacated by proof of innocence without DNA evidence.
“As it relates to Steve, the Tiger decision basically said you can’t make [a 440] motion [without DNA], if you pled guilty, so there’s nothing that actually stopped me from making that motion,” said Lopez’s lawyer, Eric Renfroe. “But what would have happened is a judge could have just tossed it regardless of the merits.”
Ironically, the Tiger case law would not stop a challenge to the Central Park jogger rape charge, which Lopez pled out of, because Reyes’s DNA was used to exonerate the Five. But that same exculpatory evidence could not be applied to the robbery he pled down to. Lopez was incarcerated for roughly four years.
Ultimately, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s Post-Conviction Justice Unit filed a joint motion with Renfroe to vacate the conviction. The process focused on how Lopez’s plea was obtained rather than his actual innocence, thanks to recantations by fellow teens who had implicated him during interrogation.
Lopez says he struggled with employment while living with a wrongful conviction for more than 30 years due to the regular background checks. Meanwhile, books, movies, and Wikipedia entries told the public who the actual culprit was. Just five years ago, Matias Reyes was portrayed by a “Game of Thrones” actor in a Peabody-winning series while Lopez sat at home with his wrongful conviction.
“I’ve lost great jobs, great career opportunities,” said Lopez. “Doors were slammed, then somewhere opened a little. I tried to kick them in, but they got bad locks. I couldn’t kick them in. It’s all because of a wrongful conviction…because of the background check, I’m a ‘thief’ now. I can’t work in the financial sector. I’m not talking [about] jobs [but] career opportunities, what defines people’s lives.”
Beyond a simple fix
Lopez first broke his silence a year after his exoneration when he advocated for the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act last summer to the AmNews. He ultimately wants to be known for helping pass the bill rather than being the “forgotten” sixth defendant in the Central Park jogger case.
Back then, Renfroe maintained Lopez’s exoneration was unique in clearing a wrongful conviction stemming from a guilty plea through a district attorney’s post-conviction integrity unit, but he said his client is no longer a total exception, with the recent exoneration of Reginald Cameron by the Queens County District Attorney Office. However, the spirit of collaboration is not always present when challenging wrongful convictions.
District attorneys and defendants often find themselves on opposite sides of challenging wrongful convictions. And not every case gets heard—according to Natascha Tiger, her case was not picked up by the Orange County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit.
In fact, prosecutors represent the most vocal opposition to the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act, including Richmond County District Attorney Michael McMahon. A spokesperson from his office pointed to a letter he penned to Gov. Kathy Hochul in November, asking her to veto the bill. He did not write off the need to “fix” the Tiger decision that would allow people like Lopez and Tiger to challenge their wrongful convictions on the basis of innocence with non-DNA evidence.
“Whether or not post-conviction practice should be drastically expanded to include convictions by plea can, and should, be debated,” wrote McMahon. “However, the reasoning offered for such expansion ignores that current post-conviction practice already allows defendants to contest resolutions by guilty plea.”
Staten Island’s chief prosecutor pointed to the bill undermining the “finality” of convictions, arguing that challenges could arrive “far later,” which allows “evidence and witness memories to degrade.”
Given McMahon’s concerns, is the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act trying to do too much? Advocate Rebecca Brown agreed that the bill reaches far beyond just a Tiger fix. But she said the legislation’s other actions, like enabling post-conviction discovery and the right to appeal a post-judgment motion, which McMahon openly opposed in his letter, are critical to exonerating someone.
“Foundational is the Tiger fix—this is a critical reform. You’re really talking about most people [with a conviction],” said Brown. “The issue is all of these provisions are necessary to really furnish someone with everything they need to file a successful post-conviction claim…there are ways to work through language, and it is a comprehensive bill.”
Legal Aid Society supervising attorney Elizabeth Felber, who heads the organization’s Wrongful Conviction Unit, doesn’t foresee “floodgates” opening for CPL 440 motions if the bill passes, as Hochul alluded to in her veto. She believes the legislation serves as a serious deterrent to the mass incarceration of Black and brown New Yorkers.
“Maybe prosecutors will think twice about conviction at all costs when they have concerns about the strength or the sufficiency of the evidence they have,” said Felber. “There is a glut of cases right now from when mass incarceration really took off, which is the late ’80s and the ’90s. It’s a finite amount of cases…nowadays, they have videos, more cameras, cellphones, cell towers, [and] location services. DNA testing has become much more sophisticated. So hopefully, there will be fewer instances of this.
“The other thing is lawyers are not idiots, by and large. They’re not going to bring a case unless they believe that the case has merit, that there’s what we call a ‘pathway to exoneration.’”
Next steps for challenging wrongful convictions
State Senator Zellnor Myrie plans to reconvene stakeholders—both proponents and opponents—again this year to discuss moving forward with the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act.
“We will go back to the table and listen to people who had concerns, not the least of which as expressed by the governor, [and] the district attorneys,” said Myrie. “I recognize that there’s a natural tension in asking district attorneys, who themselves are responsible for some of these convictions, to allow for mechanisms to challenge that…if you are in fact innocent, it doesn’t matter if there are other folks who also are trying to prove their innocence. We are hoping that each individual case could be taken for what is happening in that unique situation.
“We also proposed giving more money to both the courts and the DAs to handle any sort of increase in application. I have maintained that the two have to go together. If we were to move this [bill], I think it would be important for us to have the budget support for any increase to the court system or to the [district attorney offices].”
The bill’s sponsor said the ultimate goal is to get the legislation to not be “disruptive of the system in an adverse way, but disruptive in a good way that allows for innocent people to be out with their families and in the community.”
Lopez said Hochul’s veto provides more time to bring the issue to the forefront. “Maybe not such a bad thing, because [if] it’s another 12 months, [it] just means [we] sharpen the pencils and keep going,” he said.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.