Archived page

    Earlier this year, a federal jury awarded Jawaun Fraser nearly $2 million on claims that officers fabricated evidence in order to prosecute him for robbery. Fraser spent two years in prison before a state court threw out his conviction because prosecutors and the NYPD failed to disclose that the charging officers in his case had faced dozens of civil suits alleging evidence fabrication.    
    Meanwhile, several district attorneys in the city have moved to vacate convictions connected to discredited police officers. The efforts were ignited by a 2021 letter from a coalition of public defenders and legal aid groups that flagged 22 former NYPD officers who had themselves been convicted of crimes or otherwise accused of misconduct.    
    In Adams’ case, he said police arrested him one morning in March 2018 in the hallway of the Staten Island housing complex for alleged possession of a marijuana cigarette, which was never recovered. He was also accused of lunging at one of the officers and pushing him down one of the building’s stairwells.    
    Prosecutors went on to drop the assault charges after seeing a video of the incident in the stairwell, according to court documents. Additional charges of resisting arrest, obstruction and marijuana possession were eventually adjourned in contemplation of dismissal — a process through which defendants can have cases dropped if they stay out of trouble for a set period of time.