June 11, 2026 • 60 mins
On October 12, 2003, Mark Fisher was found shot and killed in a driveway in Brooklyn, NY after spending the night hanging out with a group of his peers, including John Giuca and Antonio Russo. Upon interrogation, a few of the people that Mark had been with late the night before led police to believe that John and Antonio were involved in Mark’s murder. Despite no physical evidence and no eyewitnesses linking him to the crime, John was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison solely based on witness testimony.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello again. It's Connor Hall, senior producer for Wrongful Conviction
with another case update and behind the scenes insights, and
I have to revisit John Juka. I remember the first
time I heard about him, not the murderer itself. I mean,
if you were in New York at that time, you
couldn't escape the coverage, probably because this tragic murder fulfilled
(00:27):
every suburbanites nightmares about big, bad New York City. And
this was only about a decade after the highest number
of murders ever recorded here. So when something happens that
actually fits that terrifying belief about dangerous people lurking around
every corner, it becomes pretty easy to sell copies of
(00:48):
The New York Post. And just like so many others,
at that time, I was clueless about the prevalence of
wrongful convictions. It wasn't until working with Jason that I
found out that the sparse view that I knew about
at that time were in much greater company. But John's
case came to me not from Jason, who already knew
(01:09):
John's mother, Doren, but from a famous pizza spot in
Carol Gardens, Brooklyn. I used to live right around the
corner and one of the servers who I knew, you know,
we were catching up on the subway. She had just
had a newborn, and I told her about the podcast
that I just started producing, and she just like stopped
me and was like, you need to look up John Juca.
(01:30):
And eventually I ended up reaching out to his mom,
Doren on social media, and after covering the case, I
remember how grateful she was that I had nailed down
all the moving parts and people and motivations at play
in John's story. You know, it's one of those cases
where you have to understand the misconduct more than the
incident itself. And so that was twenty twenty three, and
(01:52):
since then, Doreen and I we make time to see
each other. Every once in a while, we have meals together.
She introduces me to other folks in this community, journalists
and exonarees legal advocates. I think she also introduced me
to James Henning, who brought us Carl Miller's case, who
was just recently exonerated, and James eventually became John's new lawyer.
(02:15):
Now where we left off in twenty twenty three, it
seemed like the best bet for John was petitioning the
New York Governor to take jurisdiction away from Brooklyn and
give it to a special prosecutor. I mean, that's how
little faith they had at attaining justice here in Brooklyn.
But James Henning has pulled off a miracle in John's
case and gotten him back into court with newly discovered evidence.
(02:39):
Another recantation, and I'll tell you about that during this
new edit of John Jukea's episode. Used to be in
two parts, Now it's one, Okay. Anyway, I'll be popping
back in when the time comes to better explain where
things stand for John.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
On October eleventh, two thousand and three, three three groups
of college kids, one from Long Island, another from Brooklyn
as well as New Jersey, ran into one another at
a bar on the Upper East side of Manhattan. A
mutual friend among them, Angel DiPietro, New Brooklyn night Albert Cleary,
as well as her Fairfield University classmate Mark Fisher, a
football player from New Jersey. When the Knight started to
(03:20):
wind down and all of the trains a Long Island
and New Jersey had stopped running, Albert Cleary's friend, twenty
year old John Juca offered up his house in Flatbush,
Brooklyn for an after party and a place to crash.
A few of John and Albert's friends joined, including a
neighborhood tough guy named Antonio Russo. Sometime before six am,
Angel and Albert walked to his nearby house. Since Angel
(03:44):
was the only person Mark Fisher knew, he left to
find his way over to Albert's with Antonio Russo and
soon ended up fatally shot without his wallet on the
driveway across from Albert Cleary's house, a blanket from John's
house at its feet. In the immediate aftermas Antonio Russo
cut his dreadlocks and absconded to California. A police investigation
(04:05):
revealed that other voices at a car door were heard
before the gunshots. Albert and Angel denied any knowledge, and
soon statements were made that alleged that John Juca was involved.
The motivations and level of involvement varied, but with this
many witnesses placing blame on John. There had to be
something to it. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back
(04:37):
to wrongful conviction. Today. We have a story that was
front page news all over in New York City when
it happened with flaring headlines, salacious headlines about wanna be
Brooklyn gangsters who allegedly conspired at an after party to
kill a suburban college football star who just happened to
be in their midst, when in fact, there were no gangsters,
(04:58):
only a group of friends and and the murder was
not a group effort at all. The only group effort
here took the form of multiple conflicting false statements against
a member of that group, John Juca, and John is
calling in from prison in upstate New York right now.
I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but we're very
honored to have you.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
The only good news in this whole, miserable story is
that his attorney is Mark Betra. Welcome to ronful conviction.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Glad to be here, Thanks for having me and Mark.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Why was this such a high profile case?
Speaker 4 (05:29):
This was a big one. I mean, at the time
I was a prosecutor in Manhattan. It was in the
fall of two thousand and three. It felt like there
was an update on this flawed investigation every day. It
was the grid Kid murder case. Because Mark Fisher was
a nineteen year old, good looking college football player from
New Jersey who went to Brooklyn for the first time
(05:50):
in his life and unfortunately he ended up dead on
the street. The grid Kid murder case became sensational from day.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
One when that moniker actually referred to the admitted grid
Kid killer, John's co defendant, Antonio Russo. But somehow John's
face was also plastered on the front page of tabloids
as if he was some sort of criminal mastermind or
co conspirator to somehow actually involved. The prosecution never actually
(06:21):
decided on any one theory. They just put all this
stuff out there and the press ate it up and
polluted the jury pool. Now, don't forget the HBO series
The Sopranos was an absolute cultural phenomenon at this time.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
By the time his trial came around, you actually had
the prosecutor comparing him to Tony Soprano and talking about
ordering hits to build up street credibility for a non
existent gang, which in fact was just a bunch of
knucklehead teenagers in Brooklyn calling themselves names.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And this alleged gang was called the ghetto Mafia. Right, So, John,
what exactly was the ghetto Mafia?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Oh? My god, we had some people who used to
hang out with us who never even heard of that name.
Some people who considered it a joke, and there were
other people who didn't. One thing was never was an
actual gang.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
John was just a regular, you know, nineteen year old
Brooklyn kid.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
So let's talk about your life before all of this, John,
you grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Right, It's like a little enclave in flat Bush called
Prospect Park South. I guess you could say I grew
up in a regular, middle class upbringing. First, I went
to public school PS one thirty nine. Then I went
to Catholic school around third grade when my mother met
my stepfather.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
So your parents broke up when you were.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Young, Yes, when I was five years old my stepfather,
but considered him like my father. Also, I didn't look
at it as a negative thing. Really, My real father
went on to get married again, and that woman who
he married already had kids, so he had a family
over there too, and I considered them family. Also. I
looked at it as I had two fathers, like two
men in my life who loved me and wanted to
see me succeed and supported me.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
And your biological father ended up suffering a stroke when
you were nineteen, which ended up having relevance in this case.
But at that time, like you said, both he and
your stepdad were supportive of you. You were trying to
succeed as an actor and actually got some work as
a teenager.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah. I was on School of Rock. I got to
meet Jack Black, the guys from Law and Order. I
was in Lawn Order like ten times. I played a
dead kid on Law and Order. I remember one funny
story that I'm on Law and Order and I'm the
dead kids. I'm laying on the pavement and I have
fake blood all over my head and everything, and I
remember the two actors, Jerry or Back and the other one,
Chris not Yeah, and they have to kneel down and
(08:32):
search my pockets. I have a pair of keys, so
Jerry Orbank kneels down and he kneels right on the
keys and he's son of a bitch and they're like cut.
And then I had to smoke some weed before I went,
and this is not part of script. And he goes
it smells like marijuana, and they're like cut, Andy, what
(08:53):
are you talking about. He's like, I don't know, it
smells like marijuana. And my stepfather's looking at me like,
oh my god, I'm gonna fuck kill.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
You and Jerry orback rest in peace. And your stepfather
was there too, So it sounds like you had this great,
sort of blended Brady bunch sort of a family situation.
And the woman at the center of it your mom, Doreen.
I know her from rallies and events and calls and texts,
and she's just a pillar of strength and somebody I
(09:21):
admired greatly.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Yeah, she always told me that law enforcement was a
good guy. I remember this growing up. She was encouraging
me to go to John j encouraging me to become
a comp Her brother is a correctional So my uncle Eddie.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
That's another crazy irony about your story, which is that
while you were pursuing an acting career, you were also
studying criminal justice at John Jay College.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yes, and what you learn about the criminal justice system
in school is just one hundred and eighty degrees from
the reality. They say that you have all these rights,
and they're not going to arrest people unless this standard
is mad, and then they don't get convicted unless this
standard is mat and on. It's just none of that
is true.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, you saw those standards go out the window pretty
quickly when the false statements that were used to obtain
your arrest, warrant, and conviction didn't even form a cohesive narrative. Now,
one of the people who gave false testimony against you
was your girlfriend at the time, Lauren Calciano. Now we're
going to read from her recantation later. But you two
had started dating in high school. Right.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
She was my first love. I was with hers since
I was about I don't know, fifteen or sixteen. Why
you used to practically live at her house sometimes I
knew her whole family.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
You ended up hiring her family's attorney, Sam Gregory, who
had previously represented her father, Sal Calciano.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
He was head of maintenance in the World Trade Center.
He went to Federal prisons because the World Trade Center
got robbed. They said it was about four million Americans.
This is in the nineties.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Sometimes, for whatever her father's mistakes were, the DA was
eventually able to use her father's situation, among other things,
in order to coerce her false testimony against you. They
were also able to coerce or incentivize your friend Albert
Cleary as well, who was arguably closer to this incident
than you were. Albert's mother, Susan Cleary, was the vice
(11:02):
president of the King's County GOP Executive Committee, the group
in Brooklyn that can authorize what is known as a
Wilson pacula, which allows a candidate from another party to
run on that party's ticket, and it can be used
in order to run unopposed or in the case when
a candidate loses their party's primary election. Whether or not
that was a bargaining ship used to keep her son's
name out of the investigation, that's something we'll never know.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
A lot of people say the system is broken. I
don't think it's broken. I think it's working exactly how
they intended it to work, as like a battering ramp
for the rich and powerful.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, and as we've seen in cases like yours, the
prosecutor's office will use high profile cases for publicity with
the hope of reaping those benefits come election time. Now,
back in two thousand and three, the DA was Charles
Joe Hines. Now, anyone who's familiar with our podcast is
familiar with the problems in Brooklyn during the Hinz era
nineteen ninety to twenty thirteen.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Maybe in the last ten or fifteen years when people
have really been paying attention to the problem of wrongful convictions.
But I think a lot of the momentum on this
really started when people like Ken Thompson were running against
Hines ten years ago and exposing bad case after bad case.
And this is exhibit A.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And many of the people who worked under Hines, who
were responsible and complicit and so many of the wrongful
convictions of that era are still there today. And those
who have moved on to private practice or even careers
in media, like the trial prosecutor in this case, Anna
Segon Nickolazzi, those former heinz Adas, their reputations in public
fates are arguably tied to the political fate of the
(12:34):
Brooklyn DA's office.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
In terms of the graduates of the Hines DA's office,
this trial prosecutor was their superstar. She's on TV today
as an expert on everything that's right in criminal justice,
and it would have been humiliating for the Brooklyn DA
to take her down.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Why would anyone be proud of sending an innocent man
to prison and effectively compounding the tragic loss of another
young man's life. So let's get to the incident the
crux of everything we're discussing the awful night of October
eleventh into the twelfth of two thousand and three.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
It was Columbus Day weekend. Mark Fisher, who went to
Fairfield University in Connecticut and some of his friends went
to the city and partied. John Juca and his friend
Albert Cleary and a few others also went to the city,
and the groups ended up being connected through a very
interesting person in this sordid process named Angel DiPietro, who
(13:32):
was a college classmate and theoretically friend of Mark Fisher,
who also was friendly with Albert Cleary.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
So you had the Brooklyn contingent, which was John, Albert Cleary,
and two more neighborhood friends, Angel di Pietro and her
friend Meredith Denahan from Long Island and Mark Fisher who
had come in from New Jersey, and they met at
a bar on the Upper east side of Manhattan, which
at the time was known to college kids for being
the home of many bars that had pretty loose id policies.
(14:00):
And so now it was getting late and the Long
Island and New Jersey kids had to figure out a
way home on the train.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
The last train left the next one didn't leave till
sometime the next morning, so they were stranded. So I
opened my house to them. In the cab it was me, Albert,
Mary Mark, and Angel. Me and Albert paid for the cab,
and then after we got there, a few more people
showed up. I'm pretty sure it was Tommy. Jimmy, my
brother was home, and then Antonio Russo.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Russo had a house right behind John, so they were
certainly friendly from the neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Now, Antonio Russo was a strongly built high school dropout
who wore dreadlocks and sold weed, which was the reason
he gave for coming over to John's house in a
twenty eighteen interview with the cops to sell weed to
some of those who were interested, and according to three people,
Russo had a gun in his waistband both before and
after the murder. One of those three people said they
(14:54):
had been threatened with it.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
He's the tough guy. He's a little bit crazy, not
in the legal sense, just in the real world sense,
making everyone uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
But for now he's supplying weed to this otherwise fun
after party at John's house. Now, what's nice about Antonio
Russo's statement to detectives in twenty eighteen. Is that it
takes some of the guest work out of what actually happened. Now,
Russo said that he and Fisher went to the ATM
together so Fisher could buy weed. Their re seat said
(15:23):
for twenty three, but according to the bank it was
an hour behind. This was five twenty three am. So
Russo and Fisher returned to John's house a little after that. Now,
Albert and Angel were there when they returned, so they
soon left together to go to Albert's which was only
a couple of blocks away.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
They were there when they came back from the ATM. Yes,
and then they slip out. They say they said goodbye
to people, but I don't remember them saying goodbye to anybody.
I just remember them disappearing.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Without merit of the remark. By the way, both of
whom had a reasonable expectation that they'd be sticking with
Angel and Albert, which was their only connection to this
after party. Now we're not sure why they were left behind,
but nonetheless, Meredith had fallen asleep and before Mark actually
did you called Albert at five fifty seven am to
let him know that Mark was on his way over,
(16:11):
and then Russo left with him. Correct now, it was
cold out right, so Mark asked John if you could
take the blanket that he had draped over his shoulders.
And that becomes an interesting topic of conversation or evidence,
if you could call it that later on. What we
know is that forty minutes later, Mark Fisher was shot
and killed in front of one fifty Argyle Road, which
was just a few blocks from John's house and directly
(16:32):
across the street from Albert's correct now, according to Google Maps,
this is about a five minute walk less than a
quarter of a mile, so we're not sure what happened
in those other thirty five minutes. The free floating radicals,
if you will, are Mark Fisher, Antonio Russo, Angel Di Pietro,
and Albert Cleary.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
The people who lived on Argyle Road, they heard voices,
and the woman whose bedroom was right above the driveway
where Mark was found, car doors opening and closing, also
heard young voices, and she was adamant that one of
those was a female voice.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Right the ocupant of one point fifty Argyle, wrote Hiroko
Swornick said that she was awakened by her dog barking
and heard the sound of a car door opening and shutting.
Swornick went on to say that the view from her
second story window was obstructed by foliage, but she heard
more than two young people talking. The conversation specifically did
not sound like an argument, and one of the voices
(17:29):
was female. She said that she went back to bed,
and a bit later she and her husband heard gunshots
and called police. Now from Russo's twenty eighteen detectives report,
Russo said that while on Argyle Road, he pulled out
his German Luger nine millimeter, which belonged to him and
him alone. He took Fisher's wallet and told him to
(17:51):
run before firing a shot at the ground to let
Fisher know that the gun was real and loaded. He
then fired a shot at Fisher, who fell to the ground.
When Fisher asked him why he had shot him, Russo
emptied his clip into him, killing him on the spot.
The blanket from John's house lay underneath his feet mark
Fisher's body had been shot five times.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
They did a canvas of the neighborhood. Some people said
that they hurt shots and also saw a dark colored
car speeding away.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Now Russo said that there was a woman in a
car who could identify him. When he was fleeing the scene,
he got rid of the wallet at a sewer near his house.
It was later recovered by police. Now, immediately after the crime,
Antonio Russo did a few things that a guilty person might.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
He used to wear braids and whole life, and he
shaved his head.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Russo then decides to take a vacation in California for
a month and just disappear.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And it'll become clear that Russo's twenty eighteen account is
definitely missing a few details. But what is absolutely certain
is that he said he did this alone with his
own gun.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Our working theory has always been that Albert and Angel
stuck mumbled in to Russo doing something bad and didn't
want to get involved in coming after him because he's
a monster. Russo said he saw a girl. The neighbors
heard a girl. By their own admission, Albert and Angel
(19:14):
are across the street, now, wouldn't you know it? Who
do you think the only people on the block when
they interviewed people at the houses who said they didn't
hear anything.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I've been to this neighborhood and the neighbors driveways are
maybe at most twenty thirty yards across the street from
the other neighbor's front doors.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
The morning after the murder, Albert and Angel quickly decamped
to her Long Island home, where they hung out with
her father all day, a place Cleary had never been before.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
And Angel's father, James D. Pietro, was a prominent defense attorney.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
He's a prominent lawyer, frequent financial donor close friend to Hines.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Interestingly, Angel had plans to follow in her dad's footsteps
and later passed the bar.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
And then a short time later she gets hired as
a prosecutor, to the point where her and Nicolozzi are
colleagues for years.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
You can't make this up, so okay, So back to
the immediate aftermath. At around ten am that morning, Angel
began receiving phone calls from family and friends of Mark Fisher,
and she told them that Meredith Denahan had given Mark
trainfair and he had taken a train around eight or
nine am. Angel also told detectives that she had spoken
e Meredith on the morning of October twelfth, who allegedly
(20:25):
told her that Mark had woken John up around six
am and asked where to catch a train, but Meredith
denied that this conversation ever took place. This is two
days in and they knew that Angel wasn't telling the truth.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
In two thousand and four, late spring, early summer. You
could see they spent a lot of time tracking her
and trying to interview her friends and roommates, and they
all said, we didn't believe her. She's telling different stories.
And the people who believe Angel is not telling the
truth more than anyone else are Mark Fisher's family. They
(21:00):
I went so far as to sue both her and Cleary.
After John was convicted, they asked the DA for this
police paperwork that talked about these neighbors on Argyle Road
who said we heard a girl, and the Brooklyn DA's
response was we're not giving you that. They were protecting
Angel even back then.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
It at least appears as if some deal was made
with her, or perhaps with her father, to keep her
out of the crosshairs. So this is all super interesting.
But how do the vulnerabilities of Albert and Angel having
maybe seen Russo commit this crime and covering for that fact,
How does this get directed towards John and this narrative
(21:36):
with the ghetto mafia.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
When the cops interviewed Antonio Russo a couple days after
the murder. He is the one who planted the seed
in the cops ears that there was this big tough
gang named Ghetto Mafia, of which John and others were
involved in, and that they could have been behind this.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
As soon as I found out that the police wanted
to talk to me, I went right there to the preescing.
As a matter of fact, Lauren Calciano drove me that
was the seven oh Precinct detectives, which are the same
guys who stuck a punger up this guy's ass, abnue Luima.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And for those who don't remember the awful case of
abnue Luima, embrace yourself. It was nineteen ninety seven and
the seventieth Precinct, or the seven O as it was called,
and mister Luima was effectively kidnapped by police from the
scene of a fight outside of a club. They accused
him of assaulting one of the four police officers with them,
then brutally beat him, and when back at the seventieth Precinct,
(22:33):
they sexually assaulted mister Luima with a broken broomstick. And
so these officers knew that you knew that story.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
They tried to like subtly threaten me with that too.
When I was in the precinct, they said you have
to use the bathroom.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
They said, I don't have to use the bathroom.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
They said you have to use the bathroom. I'm like what,
And they took me to the bathroom and then tried
to question me in the bathroom, and I'm like, oh,
my fucking.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
God, unrecking believable.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
The interviews didn't go so well in the sense that,
you know, they just wanted me to either confess or
frame someone before my lawyer got there. So that's the
only thing you guys want to hear. That's it. We
have nothing more to faith.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And it appears that Albert Cleary was under the same
sort of intense pressure.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Now Cleary had denied knowing anything, and he actually had
his lawyer go on national TV to say we're cooperating,
we know nothing. They even commissioned a polygraph in which
Cleary passed the polygraph in which he said, I don't
know anything about this. I've been truthful. I've told the
police everything I know, which ostensibly at that time was
(23:56):
I know nothing.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
So John, when did you get the feeling that this
investsgation had shifted and the heat was being directed towards.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
You when they appointed this elite investigative unit consisting of
Brooklyn Adas and Major K Squad detectives, and Michael Vickione
was spearheading that team.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
So even with Albert shouting from the rooftops that he
passed a polygraph saying that he didn't know anything, this
elite investigative you that headed by the now disgraced Michael Vecchioni,
had Albert ready to say whatever the hell he could
dream up in order to save himself. And as we mentioned,
he wasn't the only one. The two most important pieces
(24:38):
of false testimony centered around when Albert and your girlfriend
at the time, Lauren Calciano, met up with you at
your house sometime on October twelfth, in the aftermath of
the murder.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
What the DA claims is later that night or the day,
according to Lauren, that John is meeting with his girlfriend
Lauren and Albert in his bedroom. According to the he
tells them what happened, and according to Cleary, John tells
him Mark disrespected my house by sitting on a table.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
At one point, Mark sat on a table and to
tell you it wasn't a big deal. This is something
that they tried to blow out a proportion later on
and make it like it was a big deal, but
it was actually nothing. Tommy said something told me. He
got off the.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Table, and that was it, right sitting on a table.
I've never heard that besided as a reason to kill anyone.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
According to Cleary, John tells him it pissed me off,
so I told Russo take my gun and show him
what's up. Basically gave the order. Lauren, again ostensibly at
the exact same meeting, says what happened is John told
us Russo had approached him that night and said, I
(25:51):
want to rob Mark. Can I borrow your gun? She
claims it's during the day, Albert claims it's at night.
And the common denominator here is that both of these
witnesses had denied for a year knowing anything until they
were pressured and threatened with all kinds of things. Lauren
was threatened with her future, very embarrassing details about her
(26:14):
personal life. Albert was threatened with jail, perjury, all kinds
of things. He was on probation for kicking the crap
out of somebody a few months earlier, and so at
a bare minimum, you have conclusive proof that either one
of Lauren or Albert take your pick. I would argue
it doesn't even matter, just demonstrates they're all full as shit.
(26:34):
But you have conclusive proof that the prosecution has no
problem calling at least one witness it knows is flat
out perjuring themselves. Now, Cleary, you also added to that
story that you know, I was talking to John and
this guy, Rob Register, the head of Ghetto mafia, and
(26:54):
John and Rob were talking about how we don't have
enough street credibilities, so we need to catch a body
at the time was a college student North Carolina. And
we of course have a sworn AFFI David from this
Register guy saying this is all a bunch of nonsense.
He's never called to testify to any of this. But
yet at the trial you have Nicolazzi talking about Capo's
(27:14):
soldiers orders Tony Soprano. It's insane.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
So these are the two false statements that eventually got
John indicted at a secret grand jury. Now, Antonio Russo
had already been arrested in November two thousand and four.
Why that took so long, nobody knows.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
After Russoll got arrested. That was it, I thought, And
then I went shopping. It was a couple of days
before Christmas, on December twenty one, two thousand and four,
and I bought a whole bunch of Christmas gifts for everyone.
And I was on my way home to put up
the Christmas tree for my mother and they were there
in front of my house.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So you spent Christmas on Riker's Island. And Joe Hines
had a serious primary challenge in two thousand and five.
As part of his taxpayer funded election campaign. He was
making a big splash in the media with the York case.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
After I got arrested, they rushed my case to trial
in eight months because.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Of that election, and they didn't plan on losing, so
they needed to support their two false witnesses with more bullshit.
And it went out and found another friend of yours
with a vulnerability to exploit, a guy named Anthony Bahari.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Yes, he was another witness who satisfied the formula of
claimed for a year and a half that he didn't
know anything, but after being heavily pressured, claimed that the
morning after the homicide that John called him up and
asked him to do him a favor and pick up
an item and leave it on the corner for somebody
(28:41):
else to pick up, and Biharry testified that he looked
at the item and that it was a firearm. So
that testimony was potentially very damaging, but it was problematic
for a lot of reasons. He was threatened with losing
his son and with being prosecuted for actually possessing the gun,
(29:03):
which is a legal fiction. The DA was threatening to
prosecute him for possession of a gun that they had
no evidence of where it was, or whether it was operable,
or anything else.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
It was alleged that John and Bahari had called each
other back and forth to plan how he would leave
the gun under a box on the street for some
mystery buyer who would leave the money in its place.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
All they had to do to prove that that wasn't
true was get these phone records.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
And then what case with this many coerced and or
incentivized witnesses would be complete without a jailhouse snitch. So
in walks Johnavido, who did time at Rikers while you
were there, he had a burglary charge and was eventually
sent to a drug rehab program with the burglary sentence
suspended pending his completion of the program. But he fell
off the wagon, and now all of a sudden, In
(29:51):
swooped the Brooklyn DA's office to snatch up another willing
participant in John's railroading. So you and Antonio Russo went
to trial together. Tell us about this case.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
The jury's being told essentially that Juka's childhood friend, Albert
Cleary's going to come in and tell you that John,
as a member of this gang ghetto mafia, told Albert
that they wanted to increase their street credibility, so they
needed to kill someone. That Mark Fisher sat on a
table in his family room. This was such an act
(30:23):
of disrespect that it made jukea rage to the point
where he told Antonio Russo take my gun and you
quote unquote show Fisher what's up, which apparently is their
way of saying shoot him.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
I remember that he tried to say that I told
Russo to wait in the bushes and ambush him on
Turner plate. There was no blood trail from Turner all
the way to his house, so it was just an
obvious lie. And he pushed a one pm phone call
up to eleven.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Which Angel Dpietro testified falsely to as well. You had
called Albert just before one pm that day. The phone
wreckers corroborated that, but both of them testified to an
eleven am call, So it might be plausible that you
were the alleged source of all of their shady information
during the immediate aftermath. Now there's something else about Albert's
(31:13):
time on the stand. Nicolazzi brought up the polygraph he
had taken to prove he didn't know anything about the crime,
but in a very misleading context.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
When he was on the stands after he says the
exact opposite of that polygraph, he says, he does know
who did this, and he does know everything about it.
She asks him, didn't you take a polygraph? And he
said yes, And then, of course, knowing polygraphs are admissible
in course, so she knew Van Gregory would object and
it was a firm So the jury thought that he
(31:43):
took and past that polygraph what he was saying. Now,
it was never cleared up that he took a polygraph
to the exact opposite of what he was saying.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Now, that is really devious. Now, they called your ex
girlfriend Lauren Calciana to the stand, whose testimony just can't
be squared with Albert Cleary's version of the same exact
conversation between the three of you on October twelve.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Both stories could not be true. There could not have
been the same meeting that Albert and Lauren are talking about,
and Albert's talking about John complaining about disrespect and ordering
Russo to commit a murder when Lauren is saying, no,
what happened is Russo said I just want to rob
the guy. Can I borrow your gun?
Speaker 2 (32:23):
And John, this was the first time that you were
hearing the one time love of your life falsely implicating
you in a murder.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
That was crushed. She stared at me the whole time
she was up there, and it wasn't like a malicious like.
She wasn't staring me down. She was looking at me
like as if she was saying I'm sorry with her eyes.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
So we've gone over three of the four substantive witnesses,
Albert Cleary, Lauren Calciano, and Anthony Bajari. Lauren and Anthony
have both recanted, as has the jail house snitch John Evito,
whose testimony were about to.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Cover he claims that I was in jail with John,
and I was having visitation in Riker's Eye Island the
same time John was, and he was with his father
and two women, and a Vito says, I overheard John
in response to the question from his father, why did
you have a gun with you? John said, I don't know,
I just did, and in essence acknowledge having a gun.
(33:17):
What the jury never learns is that John Juca's father
prior to this jailhouse visitation, which did happen, by the way,
and it's not surprising that the snitch would use a
kernel of truth that could be documented by looking at
jail records. But what the jury didn't know, and presumably
the DA didn't know it, was that John's father had
(33:41):
a series of debilitating strokes and as a result, he
couldn't speak.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
He could only say one or maybe sometimes he would
string two words together. At the time. He couldn't say
what Alvito said that she said.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
The jury also didn't know that the family relatives, the
women who were present, would have strenuously denied that occurred.
They have sworn under oath in AffA Davis if this
never happened.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
And there was even more to this false testimony where
a Vito claimed to hear incriminating statements directly from John,
this time completely changing the location of the crime.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
The murder unquestionably is on Argyle Road, the shots were
heard by the residents, but a Vito says, no, what
happened is John told me that he went to the
ATM with Mark Fisher, which, as you also said earlier,
was an hour before the murder. But this is what
snitches do. They read papers, they see the news, and
they concoct He says when Mark Fisher withdrew money at
(34:36):
the ATM that John told me he pulled out a
gun pistol with Mark Fisher beat him up, and then
Russo took the gun and shot him. So the story
changes dramatically on top of the fact that this is
coming from a jailhouse snitch who again was trying to
avoid a prison sentence.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
So what did Sam Gregory do about a Vito.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Unfortunately he didn't even know about John a Veto until
right before a trial. There's no offer of proof, meaning
here's what he's going to say. There's no notice to
the defense that, oh, by the way, we're going to
argue through this witness that Juca was physically there and
did it. So he wasn't prepared to try a case
on a theory other than the nonsense inconsistencies that was
(35:19):
going to come out of Lauren and Albert. You know,
if the defense had been aware of this from the beginning,
they could have tactically prepared differently.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
He could have prepared to have John's father's doctor testify
to his father's limitations, or the two women could have
testified to the actual substance of the conversation.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Instead, they're caught with their pants down.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Now.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
The defense did argue in their summation that the mere
fact that they called the Vito as a witness was
kind of a hail mary, because Lauren and Albert had
inconsistent stories that led the prosecutor to respond that John
Avito was just for once in his life, being a
good guy, motivated to do the right thing, and that's
the only reason he's cooperating, and that was just a
(36:01):
bald face lie.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
So they squashed his problems in exchange for testimony.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
For the time being, they kept him out of jail
despite repeated violations in a mandatory prison sentence, and then
once he was no longer needed. A year later, when
he violated the program again, they threw him out with
the trash and into prison he went when he no
longer had any value to them.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
So this exchange of leniency for testimony represents just one
Brady violation. But there's another major one in which Russo
admitted to a fellow inmate named Joe Ingram to acting alone.
And we'll get into that Ingram evidence and more detail later,
but back to trial. So now they go from two
conflicting versions of this crime to three convicting versions of
this crime.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
They're really supposed to take one theory and prove it
beyond a reasonable doubt, not give the jurors Chinese food
menu of different theories, because then you might have some
jurors that believe this and some jurors that believe that.
It's called the unanimity issue where they have to be unanimous.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
Yeah, to offer a menu of theories and basically say
it doesn't matter, you know he did it, which is
essentially what the summation amounted to, is not consistent with
due process, and it leads to a jury possibly being
six jurors say what if he ordered a murder? Four
jurors saying, what if he gave him a gun for
(37:21):
a robbery? And what if two jurors say maybe he
was physically there, Okay, but we all agree he did it. Okay, guilty,
that's absurd.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
It was the worst day of my life. I was
sentenced to twenty five to life on October nineteenth, two
thousand and five. It wasn't even a lie for twenty
five years at that point when I got sentence, I
didn't even know what twenty five years.
Speaker 5 (37:46):
When I came.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Up state, they automatically started trying to go to the
Low Library alive. But it's hard to even get up
out of bed in the morning knowing what's being done
to you. But I was going to the Low Library
every day at one point, trying to get to know
the law. And that's when I saw that my prosecutor, Nicolazzi,
used the prosecutorial misconduct playbook. She suppressed evidence more than
once that we could prove between course and witnesses, misstating
(38:26):
the full record, or even misstating the law. She told
the jury that what Lauren said alone is enough to
convict me of fill any murder. Because that's not really
true either. But then, really those early years were more
about my jura misconduct issue.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
I understand that one of your friends was with your
mom and noticed somebody in the jury that he recognized.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
I'm pretty sure it was the day the verdict. He
saw one of the jurors and he was like, holy shit,
I know this guy from the neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
And then your mom puts on her literal superhero cape.
You're going to have to hear this to believe it.
I can't say enough about Doreen.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
My mother tried to go to multiple private investigators. First,
she got ripped Dolph and she just had to take
matters into her own hands, and she did.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
She watched him for a period of time and eventually
started communicating with him, recorded her interactions with him. They
began an ostensible friendship, and after a period of time
she started talking about the case, and this guy, Jason
Alo started saying things, including admitting that he never should
(39:28):
have been on the jury because he knew some of
the people.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
He said that his cousin, who also used to hang
out at a house that I hung out at, she
thought I was guilty. He said his cousin wouldn't lie
to me about something like that he said, guys that
I used to hang out with used to bully his brother.
I didn't even recognize the names that he was talking about.
Another thing was that he said he couldn't get off
for work, but once he told them about which case
it was, his boss gave him off and said, I
(39:53):
want to see that fucking kid. Fry told him he'll
give him off with pay. Something like that.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
All kinds of things were coming out of the Skuys,
including that he didn't like Jews. Obviously, the name Djuca
sounds like Jew, but it's Italian.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
I can't even process this.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
There's just no question that the case should have been
tossed because of the ger misconduct.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
She even admitted that he was pushing these other jurors into.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
A guilty party when they filed a motion to reverse
the conviction on that issue. For whatever reason, those recordings
were not authenticated in the proper way, and so the
motion was denied on procedural grounds. But the judge who
denied the motion went farther and said, even if it
was proper, I would deny it on the merits because
this is, you know, an assault on the judicial system
(40:41):
for somebody to be going after a juror, so the
criticism was actually leveled entirely at Doreen for exposing this,
rather than the juror, who clearly had no business being
on the case.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
She didn't do anything wrong, she didn't commit any crimes.
It was just she dug for the truth and she
got it, and they didn't like what they found out
what they heard.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
So I got involved in this. In twenty twelve, was
contacted by Doreen, John's mother or who some Noah's mother
justice when she showed up in my office with just
stacks of papers. The first piece of paper that was
on top of this whole pile was a transcript in
the People of the State of New York versus John Avito,
(41:22):
and it was the court appearance in which a. Vito
had gone to court after he started meeting with John's prosecutor,
and the appearance for the da on the cover of
this transcript was Anna Sega Nicolozzi, who was John's prosecutor.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
She showed up to one of his court appearances and
made sure he didn't go to jail.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
There was no reason why a homicide prosecutor on the
biggest murder case in New York city would be appearing
on a mundane return on warrant for some mope who
had a burglary sentence because he violated a drug program
other than the fact he had to be cooperating in
the murder case.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
But the major one was the whitewashed drug program violation
documents that they gave us for John of Vito. They
put him up on a stand and got him to
say that he wasn't getting anything and didn't want anything
in return for his testimony, no leniency and no benefits
at all. Meanwhile, he just fucked up seven or eight
(42:25):
drug programs and got like all these violations, But they
gave us drug program violation reports that didn't have any
of that stuff on there. And then later when we
got the case file, we got the real copy of
the exact same document. If you pulled them up to
each other, they are the same document, but they have
more sentences in them. So somebody just highlighted that part
(42:49):
presidently and printed it out and gave it to us.
They just prepped him up there and made it look
like he was just testifying to be a good citizen
and that he didn't want anything in exchange for his testimony.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Total why, And so I knew within the first day
I met Doreen that this case was sideways.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
And all of this is happening in the ramp up
to the historic run of Ken Thompson.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
During the election in twenty twelve thirteen, a lot of
this news about angel di Pietro came out, and again
the idea that she could be hired by Hines as
a prosecutor and be Nicolozzi's colleague years later just so
absurd on his face that Ken he asked me about
what is all this? In my view, he wanted to
(43:31):
campaign on Djuka. Ironically enough, and maybe it was my
mistake at the time, but I told him, I don't
want to talk to you about anything Juka related because
you're probably going to be the next DA And I'm
telling you right now, I'm going to be coming to
you to right this wrong. And I look back and
one of my sins in this case is probably not
unloading to him, because ironically, what he would have probably
(43:55):
done is campaigned on it.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
So Ken Thompson challenges Hines against Long Eyes and the
primary he wins, and what does Joe Hines do? He'd
had to call in a favor from Albert's mother on
the King's County GOP Executive Committee and get the Wilson
Pacula waiver to allow him to run as a Republican.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
He pulled the sneaky political move to take a second
bite at the apple.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
But Ken Thompson, he wins. So now, Mark, at this point,
you're thinking it's time to resolve this once and for all. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
When we did bring the case to the Conviction Review Unit,
we presented them with all kinds of evidence, including literally hundreds,
if not thousands, of pages of medical records of John
Jucus Senior, who had the strokes that we talked about,
which meant that the Avido's story couldn't happened. We presented
them with the sworn affidavits of the two women who
were at that jailhouse visit, who denied that conversation ever
(44:47):
took place. We presented them with overwhelming proof of how
Angel and Albert clearly testified falsely and how it contradicted
what they told the police and contradicted all the other
available evidence.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
And while this is in the CiU, we're talking twenty thirteen,
twenty fourteen. Amazingly, this is when the recantation start rolling
in so In twenty fourteen, Lauren Calciano recanted. Here's her quote.
I have regretted this testimony since I was first pressured
to claim this by law enforcement officials. I repeatedly told
them that he did not have any information regarding John's
a legend involvement in this crime. Law enforcement pressured and
(45:22):
frightened me to the point that I ultimately relented and
told them what they wanted to hear. Specifically, I was
pressured to admit that John had told me that he
gave Tony Russell a gun before Tony shot and killed
Mark Fisher. She goes on to say law enforcement officials
suggested that I was involved in the aftermathod the crime
by telling me that Albert Cleary had told them that
I removed a gun, bag or evidence from John's house.
(45:44):
Although this was untrue, I recognized the seriousness of this claim.
Law enforcement officers threatened me with jail and told me
that I could be charged with obstruction and or perjury.
Ada Nicolazzi told me that if I did not cooperate
with her, the police would show open my place of
employment with a subpoena. Ada Nicolozzi repends the very personal
issue between John and me, which was discussed only in
our private letter. She told me, you do not want
(46:06):
this to come out of trial. I interpreted this as
a not so subtle threat that I would be publicly
humiliated by the DA if I did not cooperate. Adia
Nicolozzi and detectives told me that they were aware that
my father was in prison and that by not cooperating
with them, I was quote going to make this hard
on him and my family. More than any other factor,
this threat influenced me to testify in the manner that
(46:26):
they desired. Now this thing goes on for eight full pages.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
She also, in her affidavit, explained how Albert Cleary lied
because I was there and what he said was not
true either. And she also gave a little insight into
what ghetto Mafia was. She said, I was around these
people during this time period. In Ghetto Mafia is the
name of a bunch of local kids and knuckleheads, not
some sophisticated street gang. We also gave them a sworn
(46:53):
Affid Davit from if you recall when we talked about
Albert Cleary, the guy that he said was the boss
of the gang, who had spoken to John about let's
catch a body and that's why maybe Mark Fisher was shot,
And he very calmly explained under oath that I was
going to college in North Carolina and I was not
the leader of a gang. And John and I did
(47:15):
not discuss how to get a body or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
And then John Evito recan'ts.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
He did and a veto. We got all of his
Riker's Island jail record. Sure enough. He was a diagnosed
paranoid schizophrenic who had been taking psychotropic drugs, including Sarahquill,
and part of his symptoms and what Sarah Quill treats
are people who suffer auditory hallucinations. So it turns out
(47:42):
that the guy who says I overheard a man who
can't speak ask questions about a murder. You can't make
this up, had a history of actually hearing voices and
seeing snakes was another one of his visual hallucinations. We
had many, many meetings with their conviction review unit, and
(48:03):
they declined to overturn the conviction, either on innocence or
on any constitutional violations.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Once Ken Thompson took over, there was twenty five generations
and that gave me so much hope. The difference between
me and all those other guys is that the ADA
that put them in jail doesn't work there anymore. But
when it came to me, when Ken Thompson got elected,
he didn't fire Nicolazzi, so she did still work there.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
When Jonavito and Lauren Calciano and others at risk to
themselves their controverting sworn testimony with new sworn testimony when
they went in to see the conviction Review Unit, what
the DA did was record them, swear them in, make transcripts,
and put them under oath. When the Brooklyn DA witnesses
(48:49):
were interviewed Anna Sega, Nicolazzi, others, they weren't sworn. There's
no record of their interviews, and the report has never
been made public. It's never been shared, like so many
others that they do share. It's as if they viewed
the JUGA conviction review as an exercise in preparing for
a post conviction motion and locking down these witnesses to
(49:12):
cross examine them if they testify for the defense.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
They covered for her instead of doing justice like they
should have. I mean, there was a mountain of evidence
that pointed away from me, and they just didn't care.
You know, they denied me and use what we gave
them to try to count me in the course.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
This was in late fourteen, and by the first couple
of months and fifteen we filed the motion that culminated
in a reversal in February of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Yeah, well, I got the reversal of the John of
Vido issue and the fact that Nikolauzi did give him benefits.
My jury should have known about that. I got an
unanimous decision this kid should be reversed and he should
get a new trial. And then I go back down
to Ryka's Island and I sit there for a year
and a half.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
And during the discuss process, you discover this recording that
was made with a guy named ingram Ada.
Speaker 3 (50:05):
Nicolazzi made a recording in two thousand and five before
the trial. And this was a guy who was probably
trying to help himself somehow, you know. He told them
he had information and he said things that she didn't
want to hear.
Speaker 4 (50:21):
Joseph ingram was in the same cell block as John
and traveled to Bellevue for medical treatment one day with
Antonio Russo, and him and Russo were on the bus
chit chatting.
Speaker 5 (50:33):
He said.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
Russo admitted he did this alone, that I wasn't there,
I had nothing to do with it, none of that.
Speaker 4 (50:38):
And Russo admitted to Ingram that I tried to get
John to take the gun after the murder. I went
to his house and he wouldn't do it. He told
me leave go. No, this tape was not disclosed prior
to trial. It was disclosed to me in twenty eighteen,
and when the DA was contemplating a retrial, they actually
(51:01):
so desperate to get Juka they sent these detectives up
there to interview Russo to secure his cooperation to testify
against John, and instead what he tells them is I
did it alone with my own gun.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
But the new trial was never actualized, so for now
they didn't have to contend with this evidence. In June
twenty nineteen, the New York Court of Appeals reinstated the
conviction that you had reversed in twenty eighteen, and John
went back to state prison.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
And it was obvious by the decision that they didn't
know the facts of the case.
Speaker 4 (51:32):
Although they agreed with us that Nicolazzi suppressed evidence, they
argued it was not material to the outcome of trial,
which is reasoning, which is mind boggling, given that Nicolozzi's
whole summation, as I told you earlier, was about how
critical a witness A. Vito was, and how credible he was,
(51:53):
and how altruistic he was, and how he established the
real theory of what happened. And one would think that
if the defense had known the full story about his
credibility and demolished him as it should have been, that
would somehow have impacted the significance of his testimony. But
in the five to one opinion against us, they argued
it wasn't material because a Veto had been impeached about
(52:15):
other things. And it was Judge Rivera, in a very
lengthy descent, who explained why that reasoning was flawed, and
why his credibility on this particular issue is so important,
and why the behavior of the trial prosecutor was intended
to mislead the judge, the jury, and defense. You don't
(52:36):
usually see a judge of the Court of Appeals call
out a prosecutor and essentially say you engaged in deliberate
misconduct in violation of your ethical responsibilities. But again in Brooklyn,
nobody cares.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
They do care, it seems though, about bending over backwards
and doing mental gymnastics to maintain this inexplicable wrongful conviction,
which as they did when you were able to get
a hearing on this Brady material, this recording that was
made with a guy named Ingram in front of Justice
Danny Chun.
Speaker 4 (53:08):
Now, I have sworn statements, and there's been sworn testimony
from Russo's lawyer and from Sam Gregory that they didn't
get this evidence and they would have remembered it if
they did. And then we had testimony from Nicolotzi who said,
I can't say whether I did or didn't, but if
I did, it wasn't on purpose, but I probably did.
And this was litigated a couple of years ago in
front of Justice Chun, who found that the DA probably
(53:32):
disclosed it, notwithstanding the fact that Russo's lawyer and Sam
Gregory explained why this would have been significant evidence and
steps they would have taken had they known about it
back then. But nevertheless, Justice Chun found that we did
not satisfy our burden that it wasn't disclosed. And I
just respectfully because I like him personally. But the ruling
(53:56):
on that case is just flat out one hundred percent wrong.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
So that brings us to twenty twenty three, at which
point I believe there was a petition to the governor
to appoint a special prosecutor taking the case out of Brooklyn.
But eventually John and Doreen were looking for new blood,
and they found an attorney here in Brooklyn named James Henning, And,
perhaps without some of the baggage from Mark's strategy, Albert Cleary,
(54:26):
after twenty one years with no contact from John since
his conviction, decided to unburden himself and go on the
record now. As we presumed, he and Angel Dpahro were
targeted early on when they circled the wagons in an
attempt to protect themselves from both law enforcement and Anthony Russo.
Not only had they threatened Albert with prosecution, but also
(54:48):
with dragging his mother in for the grand jury. In
his sworn affidavit, he recalls that he was convinced that
John's prosecution was inevitable and that he needed to protect
himself and his family, so he cooperated and molded his
statements to the state's narrative, even as their needs changed. Now,
he admits that the whole ghetto mafia street cred business
(55:12):
was just made up. That John never told him about
ordering Russo to show Fisher what's up, nor had he
given Russo a gun, which begs a question that has
bothered me since I found out about this case. Why
couldn't investigators just accept that Russo did this alone, like
he said to Ingram before trial and again in twenty eighteen.
(55:34):
What's it that Cleary and Dpetro were so buttoned up
that they got, you know, hungry for another body? Thinking
that someone else was involved? Was the mafia theory in
the age of the Sopranos just so irresistible?
Speaker 2 (55:47):
Who knows? Now?
Speaker 1 (55:49):
Henning's new four to forty motion just one an evidentiary hearing,
but curiously not on actual innocence, only on newly discovered evidence,
which is a shame considering that that will exclude the
totality of exculpatory evidence, misconduct, and constitutional violations that we've
just covered here. Instead, Judge Danny Chun has only agreed
(56:12):
to hear Albert Cleary and Lauren Calciano's recantations. It turns
out that her powerful recantation quoted earlier was never ruled
on in court. So we really hope this hearing isn't
just some opportunity for Danny Chun to try to ignore
the entire context of John's innocence and deny him again
(56:36):
on the grounds that these two recantations they're not enough
to overturn the conviction get John a new trial. And
I mean, take a second, imagine a new trial without
Cleary Calciano, Dpietro Bajari or a veto, just Anthony Russo
saying he did it by himself with his own gun.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
So, if this goes as I sincerely hope I'll be
able to keep a promise that I made John back
in twenty twenty two, I'm going to buy you one
of those giant beers at Farrell's. You know where to
find me as soon as you get home. Everyone else
stave vigilant because they only really do their dirt in
the dark. And with that, I'll leave you with Bedro
(57:23):
and John's closing thoughts from the original episode.
Speaker 4 (57:27):
I know that you know, in the eyes of the
Brooklyn DA at this point, they just wish we would
go away and fade away, and he would do his
time and Doreen would stop fighting. I believe in this
one hundred percent. I have no doubt that John was
wrongfully convicted. I have confidence in his actual innocence. I
believed my core that he didn't commit this crime, and
that's after reviewing all the evidence. And I certainly believe
(57:50):
and know, based on my review of the evidence of
the law that his rights were violated several different ways,
and that this was not a trial. It was a
railroad just Brooklyn style justice in the Charles Hines administration,
and those skeletons are still there.
Speaker 3 (58:07):
It's just been too much suffering for too long. It's
wrong palm on top and wrong palm on top of injustice.
It's an ongoing tragedy. Not only am I being affected,
but my family is being crushed for this. They took
my youth for me and all the experiences I would
have had it, and I feel like a financial burden
on my family too. I can anchor around their neck.
(58:28):
And my mother is a getting older now on I
pray every day that I can come home while she's
still alive and she makes it. And they took all
that time away from me that I was supposed to
have with her. Being in prison wrongfully is much different
than being here for something you actually did. That's what
me and a lot of these other guys have already
been on your show have in common. That's why I
feel it's touch it for them, some of them who
(58:49):
I even never met. Because when you're here for something
you actually did, I see these other guys they get
into a routine and they just accept it. But when
you hear wrongfully, it's impossible for you to accept.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
(59:27):
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company number one.
Speaker 1 (59:43):
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good
Hello again. It's Connor Hall, senior producer for Wrongful Conviction
with another case update and behind the scenes insights, and
I have to revisit John Juka. I remember the first
time I heard about him, not the murderer itself. I mean,
if you were in New York at that time, you
couldn't escape the coverage, probably because this tragic murder fulfilled
(00:27):
every suburbanites nightmares about big, bad New York City. And
this was only about a decade after the highest number
of murders ever recorded here. So when something happens that
actually fits that terrifying belief about dangerous people lurking around
every corner, it becomes pretty easy to sell copies of
(00:48):
The New York Post. And just like so many others,
at that time, I was clueless about the prevalence of
wrongful convictions. It wasn't until working with Jason that I
found out that the sparse view that I knew about
at that time were in much greater company. But John's
case came to me not from Jason, who already knew
(01:09):
John's mother, Doren, but from a famous pizza spot in
Carol Gardens, Brooklyn. I used to live right around the
corner and one of the servers who I knew, you know,
we were catching up on the subway. She had just
had a newborn, and I told her about the podcast
that I just started producing, and she just like stopped
me and was like, you need to look up John Juca.
(01:30):
And eventually I ended up reaching out to his mom,
Doren on social media, and after covering the case, I
remember how grateful she was that I had nailed down
all the moving parts and people and motivations at play
in John's story. You know, it's one of those cases
where you have to understand the misconduct more than the
incident itself. And so that was twenty twenty three, and
(01:52):
since then, Doreen and I we make time to see
each other. Every once in a while, we have meals together.
She introduces me to other folks in this community, journalists
and exonarees legal advocates. I think she also introduced me
to James Henning, who brought us Carl Miller's case, who
was just recently exonerated, and James eventually became John's new lawyer.
(02:15):
Now where we left off in twenty twenty three, it
seemed like the best bet for John was petitioning the
New York Governor to take jurisdiction away from Brooklyn and
give it to a special prosecutor. I mean, that's how
little faith they had at attaining justice here in Brooklyn.
But James Henning has pulled off a miracle in John's
case and gotten him back into court with newly discovered evidence.
(02:39):
Another recantation, and I'll tell you about that during this
new edit of John Jukea's episode. Used to be in
two parts, Now it's one, Okay. Anyway, I'll be popping
back in when the time comes to better explain where
things stand for John.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
On October eleventh, two thousand and three, three three groups
of college kids, one from Long Island, another from Brooklyn
as well as New Jersey, ran into one another at
a bar on the Upper East side of Manhattan. A
mutual friend among them, Angel DiPietro, New Brooklyn night Albert Cleary,
as well as her Fairfield University classmate Mark Fisher, a
football player from New Jersey. When the Knight started to
(03:20):
wind down and all of the trains a Long Island
and New Jersey had stopped running, Albert Cleary's friend, twenty
year old John Juca offered up his house in Flatbush,
Brooklyn for an after party and a place to crash.
A few of John and Albert's friends joined, including a
neighborhood tough guy named Antonio Russo. Sometime before six am,
Angel and Albert walked to his nearby house. Since Angel
(03:44):
was the only person Mark Fisher knew, he left to
find his way over to Albert's with Antonio Russo and
soon ended up fatally shot without his wallet on the
driveway across from Albert Cleary's house, a blanket from John's
house at its feet. In the immediate aftermas Antonio Russo
cut his dreadlocks and absconded to California. A police investigation
(04:05):
revealed that other voices at a car door were heard
before the gunshots. Albert and Angel denied any knowledge, and
soon statements were made that alleged that John Juca was involved.
The motivations and level of involvement varied, but with this
many witnesses placing blame on John. There had to be
something to it. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back
(04:37):
to wrongful conviction. Today. We have a story that was
front page news all over in New York City when
it happened with flaring headlines, salacious headlines about wanna be
Brooklyn gangsters who allegedly conspired at an after party to
kill a suburban college football star who just happened to
be in their midst, when in fact, there were no gangsters,
(04:58):
only a group of friends and and the murder was
not a group effort at all. The only group effort
here took the form of multiple conflicting false statements against
a member of that group, John Juca, and John is
calling in from prison in upstate New York right now.
I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but we're very
honored to have you.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
The only good news in this whole, miserable story is
that his attorney is Mark Betra. Welcome to ronful conviction.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Glad to be here, Thanks for having me and Mark.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Why was this such a high profile case?
Speaker 4 (05:29):
This was a big one. I mean, at the time
I was a prosecutor in Manhattan. It was in the
fall of two thousand and three. It felt like there
was an update on this flawed investigation every day. It
was the grid Kid murder case. Because Mark Fisher was
a nineteen year old, good looking college football player from
New Jersey who went to Brooklyn for the first time
(05:50):
in his life and unfortunately he ended up dead on
the street. The grid Kid murder case became sensational from day.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
One when that moniker actually referred to the admitted grid
Kid killer, John's co defendant, Antonio Russo. But somehow John's
face was also plastered on the front page of tabloids
as if he was some sort of criminal mastermind or
co conspirator to somehow actually involved. The prosecution never actually
(06:21):
decided on any one theory. They just put all this
stuff out there and the press ate it up and
polluted the jury pool. Now, don't forget the HBO series
The Sopranos was an absolute cultural phenomenon at this time.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
By the time his trial came around, you actually had
the prosecutor comparing him to Tony Soprano and talking about
ordering hits to build up street credibility for a non
existent gang, which in fact was just a bunch of
knucklehead teenagers in Brooklyn calling themselves names.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And this alleged gang was called the ghetto Mafia. Right, So, John,
what exactly was the ghetto Mafia?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Oh? My god, we had some people who used to
hang out with us who never even heard of that name.
Some people who considered it a joke, and there were
other people who didn't. One thing was never was an
actual gang.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
John was just a regular, you know, nineteen year old
Brooklyn kid.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
So let's talk about your life before all of this, John,
you grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Right, It's like a little enclave in flat Bush called
Prospect Park South. I guess you could say I grew
up in a regular, middle class upbringing. First, I went
to public school PS one thirty nine. Then I went
to Catholic school around third grade when my mother met
my stepfather.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
So your parents broke up when you were.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Young, Yes, when I was five years old my stepfather,
but considered him like my father. Also, I didn't look
at it as a negative thing. Really, My real father
went on to get married again, and that woman who
he married already had kids, so he had a family
over there too, and I considered them family. Also. I
looked at it as I had two fathers, like two
men in my life who loved me and wanted to
see me succeed and supported me.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
And your biological father ended up suffering a stroke when
you were nineteen, which ended up having relevance in this case.
But at that time, like you said, both he and
your stepdad were supportive of you. You were trying to
succeed as an actor and actually got some work as
a teenager.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah. I was on School of Rock. I got to
meet Jack Black, the guys from Law and Order. I
was in Lawn Order like ten times. I played a
dead kid on Law and Order. I remember one funny
story that I'm on Law and Order and I'm the
dead kids. I'm laying on the pavement and I have
fake blood all over my head and everything, and I
remember the two actors, Jerry or Back and the other one,
Chris not Yeah, and they have to kneel down and
(08:32):
search my pockets. I have a pair of keys, so
Jerry Orbank kneels down and he kneels right on the
keys and he's son of a bitch and they're like cut.
And then I had to smoke some weed before I went,
and this is not part of script. And he goes
it smells like marijuana, and they're like cut, Andy, what
(08:53):
are you talking about. He's like, I don't know, it
smells like marijuana. And my stepfather's looking at me like,
oh my god, I'm gonna fuck kill.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
You and Jerry orback rest in peace. And your stepfather
was there too, So it sounds like you had this great,
sort of blended Brady bunch sort of a family situation.
And the woman at the center of it your mom, Doreen.
I know her from rallies and events and calls and texts,
and she's just a pillar of strength and somebody I
(09:21):
admired greatly.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Yeah, she always told me that law enforcement was a
good guy. I remember this growing up. She was encouraging
me to go to John j encouraging me to become
a comp Her brother is a correctional So my uncle Eddie.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
That's another crazy irony about your story, which is that
while you were pursuing an acting career, you were also
studying criminal justice at John Jay College.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yes, and what you learn about the criminal justice system
in school is just one hundred and eighty degrees from
the reality. They say that you have all these rights,
and they're not going to arrest people unless this standard
is mad, and then they don't get convicted unless this
standard is mat and on. It's just none of that
is true.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, you saw those standards go out the window pretty
quickly when the false statements that were used to obtain
your arrest, warrant, and conviction didn't even form a cohesive narrative. Now,
one of the people who gave false testimony against you
was your girlfriend at the time, Lauren Calciano. Now we're
going to read from her recantation later. But you two
had started dating in high school. Right.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
She was my first love. I was with hers since
I was about I don't know, fifteen or sixteen. Why
you used to practically live at her house sometimes I
knew her whole family.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
You ended up hiring her family's attorney, Sam Gregory, who
had previously represented her father, Sal Calciano.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
He was head of maintenance in the World Trade Center.
He went to Federal prisons because the World Trade Center
got robbed. They said it was about four million Americans.
This is in the nineties.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Sometimes, for whatever her father's mistakes were, the DA was
eventually able to use her father's situation, among other things,
in order to coerce her false testimony against you. They
were also able to coerce or incentivize your friend Albert
Cleary as well, who was arguably closer to this incident
than you were. Albert's mother, Susan Cleary, was the vice
(11:02):
president of the King's County GOP Executive Committee, the group
in Brooklyn that can authorize what is known as a
Wilson pacula, which allows a candidate from another party to
run on that party's ticket, and it can be used
in order to run unopposed or in the case when
a candidate loses their party's primary election. Whether or not
that was a bargaining ship used to keep her son's
name out of the investigation, that's something we'll never know.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
A lot of people say the system is broken. I
don't think it's broken. I think it's working exactly how
they intended it to work, as like a battering ramp
for the rich and powerful.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, and as we've seen in cases like yours, the
prosecutor's office will use high profile cases for publicity with
the hope of reaping those benefits come election time. Now,
back in two thousand and three, the DA was Charles
Joe Hines. Now, anyone who's familiar with our podcast is
familiar with the problems in Brooklyn during the Hinz era
nineteen ninety to twenty thirteen.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Maybe in the last ten or fifteen years when people
have really been paying attention to the problem of wrongful convictions.
But I think a lot of the momentum on this
really started when people like Ken Thompson were running against
Hines ten years ago and exposing bad case after bad case.
And this is exhibit A.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And many of the people who worked under Hines, who
were responsible and complicit and so many of the wrongful
convictions of that era are still there today. And those
who have moved on to private practice or even careers
in media, like the trial prosecutor in this case, Anna
Segon Nickolazzi, those former heinz Adas, their reputations in public
fates are arguably tied to the political fate of the
(12:34):
Brooklyn DA's office.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
In terms of the graduates of the Hines DA's office,
this trial prosecutor was their superstar. She's on TV today
as an expert on everything that's right in criminal justice,
and it would have been humiliating for the Brooklyn DA
to take her down.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Why would anyone be proud of sending an innocent man
to prison and effectively compounding the tragic loss of another
young man's life. So let's get to the incident the
crux of everything we're discussing the awful night of October
eleventh into the twelfth of two thousand and three.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
It was Columbus Day weekend. Mark Fisher, who went to
Fairfield University in Connecticut and some of his friends went
to the city and partied. John Juca and his friend
Albert Cleary and a few others also went to the city,
and the groups ended up being connected through a very
interesting person in this sordid process named Angel DiPietro, who
(13:32):
was a college classmate and theoretically friend of Mark Fisher,
who also was friendly with Albert Cleary.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
So you had the Brooklyn contingent, which was John, Albert Cleary,
and two more neighborhood friends, Angel di Pietro and her
friend Meredith Denahan from Long Island and Mark Fisher who
had come in from New Jersey, and they met at
a bar on the Upper east side of Manhattan, which
at the time was known to college kids for being
the home of many bars that had pretty loose id policies.
(14:00):
And so now it was getting late and the Long
Island and New Jersey kids had to figure out a
way home on the train.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
The last train left the next one didn't leave till
sometime the next morning, so they were stranded. So I
opened my house to them. In the cab it was me, Albert,
Mary Mark, and Angel. Me and Albert paid for the cab,
and then after we got there, a few more people
showed up. I'm pretty sure it was Tommy. Jimmy, my
brother was home, and then Antonio Russo.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Russo had a house right behind John, so they were
certainly friendly from the neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Now, Antonio Russo was a strongly built high school dropout
who wore dreadlocks and sold weed, which was the reason
he gave for coming over to John's house in a
twenty eighteen interview with the cops to sell weed to
some of those who were interested, and according to three people,
Russo had a gun in his waistband both before and
after the murder. One of those three people said they
(14:54):
had been threatened with it.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
He's the tough guy. He's a little bit crazy, not
in the legal sense, just in the real world sense,
making everyone uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
But for now he's supplying weed to this otherwise fun
after party at John's house. Now, what's nice about Antonio
Russo's statement to detectives in twenty eighteen. Is that it
takes some of the guest work out of what actually happened. Now,
Russo said that he and Fisher went to the ATM
together so Fisher could buy weed. Their re seat said
(15:23):
for twenty three, but according to the bank it was
an hour behind. This was five twenty three am. So
Russo and Fisher returned to John's house a little after that. Now,
Albert and Angel were there when they returned, so they
soon left together to go to Albert's which was only
a couple of blocks away.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
They were there when they came back from the ATM. Yes,
and then they slip out. They say they said goodbye
to people, but I don't remember them saying goodbye to anybody.
I just remember them disappearing.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Without merit of the remark. By the way, both of
whom had a reasonable expectation that they'd be sticking with
Angel and Albert, which was their only connection to this
after party. Now we're not sure why they were left behind,
but nonetheless, Meredith had fallen asleep and before Mark actually
did you called Albert at five fifty seven am to
let him know that Mark was on his way over,
(16:11):
and then Russo left with him. Correct now, it was
cold out right, so Mark asked John if you could
take the blanket that he had draped over his shoulders.
And that becomes an interesting topic of conversation or evidence,
if you could call it that later on. What we
know is that forty minutes later, Mark Fisher was shot
and killed in front of one fifty Argyle Road, which
was just a few blocks from John's house and directly
(16:32):
across the street from Albert's correct now, according to Google Maps,
this is about a five minute walk less than a
quarter of a mile, so we're not sure what happened
in those other thirty five minutes. The free floating radicals,
if you will, are Mark Fisher, Antonio Russo, Angel Di Pietro,
and Albert Cleary.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
The people who lived on Argyle Road, they heard voices,
and the woman whose bedroom was right above the driveway
where Mark was found, car doors opening and closing, also
heard young voices, and she was adamant that one of
those was a female voice.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Right the ocupant of one point fifty Argyle, wrote Hiroko
Swornick said that she was awakened by her dog barking
and heard the sound of a car door opening and shutting.
Swornick went on to say that the view from her
second story window was obstructed by foliage, but she heard
more than two young people talking. The conversation specifically did
not sound like an argument, and one of the voices
(17:29):
was female. She said that she went back to bed,
and a bit later she and her husband heard gunshots
and called police. Now from Russo's twenty eighteen detectives report,
Russo said that while on Argyle Road, he pulled out
his German Luger nine millimeter, which belonged to him and
him alone. He took Fisher's wallet and told him to
(17:51):
run before firing a shot at the ground to let
Fisher know that the gun was real and loaded. He
then fired a shot at Fisher, who fell to the ground.
When Fisher asked him why he had shot him, Russo
emptied his clip into him, killing him on the spot.
The blanket from John's house lay underneath his feet mark
Fisher's body had been shot five times.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
They did a canvas of the neighborhood. Some people said
that they hurt shots and also saw a dark colored
car speeding away.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Now Russo said that there was a woman in a
car who could identify him. When he was fleeing the scene,
he got rid of the wallet at a sewer near his house.
It was later recovered by police. Now, immediately after the crime,
Antonio Russo did a few things that a guilty person might.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
He used to wear braids and whole life, and he
shaved his head.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Russo then decides to take a vacation in California for
a month and just disappear.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And it'll become clear that Russo's twenty eighteen account is
definitely missing a few details. But what is absolutely certain
is that he said he did this alone with his
own gun.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Our working theory has always been that Albert and Angel
stuck mumbled in to Russo doing something bad and didn't
want to get involved in coming after him because he's
a monster. Russo said he saw a girl. The neighbors
heard a girl. By their own admission, Albert and Angel
(19:14):
are across the street, now, wouldn't you know it? Who
do you think the only people on the block when
they interviewed people at the houses who said they didn't
hear anything.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I've been to this neighborhood and the neighbors driveways are
maybe at most twenty thirty yards across the street from
the other neighbor's front doors.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
The morning after the murder, Albert and Angel quickly decamped
to her Long Island home, where they hung out with
her father all day, a place Cleary had never been before.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
And Angel's father, James D. Pietro, was a prominent defense attorney.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
He's a prominent lawyer, frequent financial donor close friend to Hines.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Interestingly, Angel had plans to follow in her dad's footsteps
and later passed the bar.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
And then a short time later she gets hired as
a prosecutor, to the point where her and Nicolozzi are
colleagues for years.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
You can't make this up, so okay, So back to
the immediate aftermath. At around ten am that morning, Angel
began receiving phone calls from family and friends of Mark Fisher,
and she told them that Meredith Denahan had given Mark
trainfair and he had taken a train around eight or
nine am. Angel also told detectives that she had spoken
e Meredith on the morning of October twelfth, who allegedly
(20:25):
told her that Mark had woken John up around six
am and asked where to catch a train, but Meredith
denied that this conversation ever took place. This is two
days in and they knew that Angel wasn't telling the truth.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
In two thousand and four, late spring, early summer. You
could see they spent a lot of time tracking her
and trying to interview her friends and roommates, and they
all said, we didn't believe her. She's telling different stories.
And the people who believe Angel is not telling the
truth more than anyone else are Mark Fisher's family. They
(21:00):
I went so far as to sue both her and Cleary.
After John was convicted, they asked the DA for this
police paperwork that talked about these neighbors on Argyle Road
who said we heard a girl, and the Brooklyn DA's
response was we're not giving you that. They were protecting
Angel even back then.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
It at least appears as if some deal was made
with her, or perhaps with her father, to keep her
out of the crosshairs. So this is all super interesting.
But how do the vulnerabilities of Albert and Angel having
maybe seen Russo commit this crime and covering for that fact,
How does this get directed towards John and this narrative
(21:36):
with the ghetto mafia.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
When the cops interviewed Antonio Russo a couple days after
the murder. He is the one who planted the seed
in the cops ears that there was this big tough
gang named Ghetto Mafia, of which John and others were
involved in, and that they could have been behind this.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
As soon as I found out that the police wanted
to talk to me, I went right there to the preescing.
As a matter of fact, Lauren Calciano drove me that
was the seven oh Precinct detectives, which are the same
guys who stuck a punger up this guy's ass, abnue Luima.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And for those who don't remember the awful case of
abnue Luima, embrace yourself. It was nineteen ninety seven and
the seventieth Precinct, or the seven O as it was called,
and mister Luima was effectively kidnapped by police from the
scene of a fight outside of a club. They accused
him of assaulting one of the four police officers with them,
then brutally beat him, and when back at the seventieth Precinct,
(22:33):
they sexually assaulted mister Luima with a broken broomstick. And
so these officers knew that you knew that story.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
They tried to like subtly threaten me with that too.
When I was in the precinct, they said you have
to use the bathroom.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
They said, I don't have to use the bathroom.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
They said you have to use the bathroom. I'm like what,
And they took me to the bathroom and then tried
to question me in the bathroom, and I'm like, oh,
my fucking.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
God, unrecking believable.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
The interviews didn't go so well in the sense that,
you know, they just wanted me to either confess or
frame someone before my lawyer got there. So that's the
only thing you guys want to hear. That's it. We
have nothing more to faith.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And it appears that Albert Cleary was under the same
sort of intense pressure.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Now Cleary had denied knowing anything, and he actually had
his lawyer go on national TV to say we're cooperating,
we know nothing. They even commissioned a polygraph in which
Cleary passed the polygraph in which he said, I don't
know anything about this. I've been truthful. I've told the
police everything I know, which ostensibly at that time was
(23:56):
I know nothing.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
So John, when did you get the feeling that this
investsgation had shifted and the heat was being directed towards.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
You when they appointed this elite investigative unit consisting of
Brooklyn Adas and Major K Squad detectives, and Michael Vickione
was spearheading that team.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
So even with Albert shouting from the rooftops that he
passed a polygraph saying that he didn't know anything, this
elite investigative you that headed by the now disgraced Michael Vecchioni,
had Albert ready to say whatever the hell he could
dream up in order to save himself. And as we mentioned,
he wasn't the only one. The two most important pieces
(24:38):
of false testimony centered around when Albert and your girlfriend
at the time, Lauren Calciano, met up with you at
your house sometime on October twelfth, in the aftermath of
the murder.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
What the DA claims is later that night or the day,
according to Lauren, that John is meeting with his girlfriend
Lauren and Albert in his bedroom. According to the he
tells them what happened, and according to Cleary, John tells
him Mark disrespected my house by sitting on a table.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
At one point, Mark sat on a table and to
tell you it wasn't a big deal. This is something
that they tried to blow out a proportion later on
and make it like it was a big deal, but
it was actually nothing. Tommy said something told me. He
got off the.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Table, and that was it, right sitting on a table.
I've never heard that besided as a reason to kill anyone.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
According to Cleary, John tells him it pissed me off,
so I told Russo take my gun and show him
what's up. Basically gave the order. Lauren, again ostensibly at
the exact same meeting, says what happened is John told
us Russo had approached him that night and said, I
(25:51):
want to rob Mark. Can I borrow your gun? She
claims it's during the day, Albert claims it's at night.
And the common denominator here is that both of these
witnesses had denied for a year knowing anything until they
were pressured and threatened with all kinds of things. Lauren
was threatened with her future, very embarrassing details about her
(26:14):
personal life. Albert was threatened with jail, perjury, all kinds
of things. He was on probation for kicking the crap
out of somebody a few months earlier, and so at
a bare minimum, you have conclusive proof that either one
of Lauren or Albert take your pick. I would argue
it doesn't even matter, just demonstrates they're all full as shit.
(26:34):
But you have conclusive proof that the prosecution has no
problem calling at least one witness it knows is flat
out perjuring themselves. Now, Cleary, you also added to that
story that you know, I was talking to John and
this guy, Rob Register, the head of Ghetto mafia, and
(26:54):
John and Rob were talking about how we don't have
enough street credibilities, so we need to catch a body
at the time was a college student North Carolina. And
we of course have a sworn AFFI David from this
Register guy saying this is all a bunch of nonsense.
He's never called to testify to any of this. But
yet at the trial you have Nicolazzi talking about Capo's
(27:14):
soldiers orders Tony Soprano. It's insane.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
So these are the two false statements that eventually got
John indicted at a secret grand jury. Now, Antonio Russo
had already been arrested in November two thousand and four.
Why that took so long, nobody knows.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
After Russoll got arrested. That was it, I thought, And
then I went shopping. It was a couple of days
before Christmas, on December twenty one, two thousand and four,
and I bought a whole bunch of Christmas gifts for everyone.
And I was on my way home to put up
the Christmas tree for my mother and they were there
in front of my house.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So you spent Christmas on Riker's Island. And Joe Hines
had a serious primary challenge in two thousand and five.
As part of his taxpayer funded election campaign. He was
making a big splash in the media with the York case.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
After I got arrested, they rushed my case to trial
in eight months because.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Of that election, and they didn't plan on losing, so
they needed to support their two false witnesses with more bullshit.
And it went out and found another friend of yours
with a vulnerability to exploit, a guy named Anthony Bahari.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Yes, he was another witness who satisfied the formula of
claimed for a year and a half that he didn't
know anything, but after being heavily pressured, claimed that the
morning after the homicide that John called him up and
asked him to do him a favor and pick up
an item and leave it on the corner for somebody
(28:41):
else to pick up, and Biharry testified that he looked
at the item and that it was a firearm. So
that testimony was potentially very damaging, but it was problematic
for a lot of reasons. He was threatened with losing
his son and with being prosecuted for actually possessing the gun,
(29:03):
which is a legal fiction. The DA was threatening to
prosecute him for possession of a gun that they had
no evidence of where it was, or whether it was operable,
or anything else.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
It was alleged that John and Bahari had called each
other back and forth to plan how he would leave
the gun under a box on the street for some
mystery buyer who would leave the money in its place.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
All they had to do to prove that that wasn't
true was get these phone records.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
And then what case with this many coerced and or
incentivized witnesses would be complete without a jailhouse snitch. So
in walks Johnavido, who did time at Rikers while you
were there, he had a burglary charge and was eventually
sent to a drug rehab program with the burglary sentence
suspended pending his completion of the program. But he fell
off the wagon, and now all of a sudden, In
(29:51):
swooped the Brooklyn DA's office to snatch up another willing
participant in John's railroading. So you and Antonio Russo went
to trial together. Tell us about this case.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
The jury's being told essentially that Juka's childhood friend, Albert
Cleary's going to come in and tell you that John,
as a member of this gang ghetto mafia, told Albert
that they wanted to increase their street credibility, so they
needed to kill someone. That Mark Fisher sat on a
table in his family room. This was such an act
(30:23):
of disrespect that it made jukea rage to the point
where he told Antonio Russo take my gun and you
quote unquote show Fisher what's up, which apparently is their
way of saying shoot him.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
I remember that he tried to say that I told
Russo to wait in the bushes and ambush him on
Turner plate. There was no blood trail from Turner all
the way to his house, so it was just an
obvious lie. And he pushed a one pm phone call
up to eleven.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Which Angel Dpietro testified falsely to as well. You had
called Albert just before one pm that day. The phone
wreckers corroborated that, but both of them testified to an
eleven am call, So it might be plausible that you
were the alleged source of all of their shady information
during the immediate aftermath. Now there's something else about Albert's
(31:13):
time on the stand. Nicolazzi brought up the polygraph he
had taken to prove he didn't know anything about the crime,
but in a very misleading context.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
When he was on the stands after he says the
exact opposite of that polygraph, he says, he does know
who did this, and he does know everything about it.
She asks him, didn't you take a polygraph? And he
said yes, And then, of course, knowing polygraphs are admissible
in course, so she knew Van Gregory would object and
it was a firm So the jury thought that he
(31:43):
took and past that polygraph what he was saying. Now,
it was never cleared up that he took a polygraph
to the exact opposite of what he was saying.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Now, that is really devious. Now, they called your ex
girlfriend Lauren Calciana to the stand, whose testimony just can't
be squared with Albert Cleary's version of the same exact
conversation between the three of you on October twelve.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Both stories could not be true. There could not have
been the same meeting that Albert and Lauren are talking about,
and Albert's talking about John complaining about disrespect and ordering
Russo to commit a murder when Lauren is saying, no,
what happened is Russo said I just want to rob
the guy. Can I borrow your gun?
Speaker 2 (32:23):
And John, this was the first time that you were
hearing the one time love of your life falsely implicating
you in a murder.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
That was crushed. She stared at me the whole time
she was up there, and it wasn't like a malicious like.
She wasn't staring me down. She was looking at me
like as if she was saying I'm sorry with her eyes.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
So we've gone over three of the four substantive witnesses,
Albert Cleary, Lauren Calciano, and Anthony Bajari. Lauren and Anthony
have both recanted, as has the jail house snitch John Evito,
whose testimony were about to.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Cover he claims that I was in jail with John,
and I was having visitation in Riker's Eye Island the
same time John was, and he was with his father
and two women, and a Vito says, I overheard John
in response to the question from his father, why did
you have a gun with you? John said, I don't know,
I just did, and in essence acknowledge having a gun.
(33:17):
What the jury never learns is that John Juca's father
prior to this jailhouse visitation, which did happen, by the way,
and it's not surprising that the snitch would use a
kernel of truth that could be documented by looking at
jail records. But what the jury didn't know, and presumably
the DA didn't know it, was that John's father had
(33:41):
a series of debilitating strokes and as a result, he
couldn't speak.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
He could only say one or maybe sometimes he would
string two words together. At the time. He couldn't say
what Alvito said that she said.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
The jury also didn't know that the family relatives, the
women who were present, would have strenuously denied that occurred.
They have sworn under oath in AffA Davis if this
never happened.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
And there was even more to this false testimony where
a Vito claimed to hear incriminating statements directly from John,
this time completely changing the location of the crime.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
The murder unquestionably is on Argyle Road, the shots were
heard by the residents, but a Vito says, no, what
happened is John told me that he went to the
ATM with Mark Fisher, which, as you also said earlier,
was an hour before the murder. But this is what
snitches do. They read papers, they see the news, and
they concoct He says when Mark Fisher withdrew money at
(34:36):
the ATM that John told me he pulled out a
gun pistol with Mark Fisher beat him up, and then
Russo took the gun and shot him. So the story
changes dramatically on top of the fact that this is
coming from a jailhouse snitch who again was trying to
avoid a prison sentence.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
So what did Sam Gregory do about a Vito.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Unfortunately he didn't even know about John a Veto until
right before a trial. There's no offer of proof, meaning
here's what he's going to say. There's no notice to
the defense that, oh, by the way, we're going to
argue through this witness that Juca was physically there and
did it. So he wasn't prepared to try a case
on a theory other than the nonsense inconsistencies that was
(35:19):
going to come out of Lauren and Albert. You know,
if the defense had been aware of this from the beginning,
they could have tactically prepared differently.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
He could have prepared to have John's father's doctor testify
to his father's limitations, or the two women could have
testified to the actual substance of the conversation.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Instead, they're caught with their pants down.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Now.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
The defense did argue in their summation that the mere
fact that they called the Vito as a witness was
kind of a hail mary, because Lauren and Albert had
inconsistent stories that led the prosecutor to respond that John
Avito was just for once in his life, being a
good guy, motivated to do the right thing, and that's
the only reason he's cooperating, and that was just a
(36:01):
bald face lie.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
So they squashed his problems in exchange for testimony.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
For the time being, they kept him out of jail
despite repeated violations in a mandatory prison sentence, and then
once he was no longer needed. A year later, when
he violated the program again, they threw him out with
the trash and into prison he went when he no
longer had any value to them.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
So this exchange of leniency for testimony represents just one
Brady violation. But there's another major one in which Russo
admitted to a fellow inmate named Joe Ingram to acting alone.
And we'll get into that Ingram evidence and more detail later,
but back to trial. So now they go from two
conflicting versions of this crime to three convicting versions of
this crime.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
They're really supposed to take one theory and prove it
beyond a reasonable doubt, not give the jurors Chinese food
menu of different theories, because then you might have some
jurors that believe this and some jurors that believe that.
It's called the unanimity issue where they have to be unanimous.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
Yeah, to offer a menu of theories and basically say
it doesn't matter, you know he did it, which is
essentially what the summation amounted to, is not consistent with
due process, and it leads to a jury possibly being
six jurors say what if he ordered a murder? Four
jurors saying, what if he gave him a gun for
(37:21):
a robbery? And what if two jurors say maybe he
was physically there, Okay, but we all agree he did it. Okay, guilty,
that's absurd.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
It was the worst day of my life. I was
sentenced to twenty five to life on October nineteenth, two
thousand and five. It wasn't even a lie for twenty
five years at that point when I got sentence, I
didn't even know what twenty five years.
Speaker 5 (37:46):
When I came.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Up state, they automatically started trying to go to the
Low Library alive. But it's hard to even get up
out of bed in the morning knowing what's being done
to you. But I was going to the Low Library
every day at one point, trying to get to know
the law. And that's when I saw that my prosecutor, Nicolazzi,
used the prosecutorial misconduct playbook. She suppressed evidence more than
once that we could prove between course and witnesses, misstating
(38:26):
the full record, or even misstating the law. She told
the jury that what Lauren said alone is enough to
convict me of fill any murder. Because that's not really
true either. But then, really those early years were more
about my jura misconduct issue.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
I understand that one of your friends was with your
mom and noticed somebody in the jury that he recognized.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
I'm pretty sure it was the day the verdict. He
saw one of the jurors and he was like, holy shit,
I know this guy from the neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
And then your mom puts on her literal superhero cape.
You're going to have to hear this to believe it.
I can't say enough about Doreen.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
My mother tried to go to multiple private investigators. First,
she got ripped Dolph and she just had to take
matters into her own hands, and she did.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
She watched him for a period of time and eventually
started communicating with him, recorded her interactions with him. They
began an ostensible friendship, and after a period of time
she started talking about the case, and this guy, Jason
Alo started saying things, including admitting that he never should
(39:28):
have been on the jury because he knew some of
the people.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
He said that his cousin, who also used to hang
out at a house that I hung out at, she
thought I was guilty. He said his cousin wouldn't lie
to me about something like that he said, guys that
I used to hang out with used to bully his brother.
I didn't even recognize the names that he was talking about.
Another thing was that he said he couldn't get off
for work, but once he told them about which case
it was, his boss gave him off and said, I
(39:53):
want to see that fucking kid. Fry told him he'll
give him off with pay. Something like that.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
All kinds of things were coming out of the Skuys,
including that he didn't like Jews. Obviously, the name Djuca
sounds like Jew, but it's Italian.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
I can't even process this.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
There's just no question that the case should have been
tossed because of the ger misconduct.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
She even admitted that he was pushing these other jurors into.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
A guilty party when they filed a motion to reverse
the conviction on that issue. For whatever reason, those recordings
were not authenticated in the proper way, and so the
motion was denied on procedural grounds. But the judge who
denied the motion went farther and said, even if it
was proper, I would deny it on the merits because
this is, you know, an assault on the judicial system
(40:41):
for somebody to be going after a juror, so the
criticism was actually leveled entirely at Doreen for exposing this,
rather than the juror, who clearly had no business being
on the case.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
She didn't do anything wrong, she didn't commit any crimes.
It was just she dug for the truth and she
got it, and they didn't like what they found out
what they heard.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
So I got involved in this. In twenty twelve, was
contacted by Doreen, John's mother or who some Noah's mother
justice when she showed up in my office with just
stacks of papers. The first piece of paper that was
on top of this whole pile was a transcript in
the People of the State of New York versus John Avito,
(41:22):
and it was the court appearance in which a. Vito
had gone to court after he started meeting with John's prosecutor,
and the appearance for the da on the cover of
this transcript was Anna Sega Nicolozzi, who was John's prosecutor.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
She showed up to one of his court appearances and
made sure he didn't go to jail.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
There was no reason why a homicide prosecutor on the
biggest murder case in New York city would be appearing
on a mundane return on warrant for some mope who
had a burglary sentence because he violated a drug program
other than the fact he had to be cooperating in
the murder case.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
But the major one was the whitewashed drug program violation
documents that they gave us for John of Vito. They
put him up on a stand and got him to
say that he wasn't getting anything and didn't want anything
in return for his testimony, no leniency and no benefits
at all. Meanwhile, he just fucked up seven or eight
(42:25):
drug programs and got like all these violations, But they
gave us drug program violation reports that didn't have any
of that stuff on there. And then later when we
got the case file, we got the real copy of
the exact same document. If you pulled them up to
each other, they are the same document, but they have
more sentences in them. So somebody just highlighted that part
(42:49):
presidently and printed it out and gave it to us.
They just prepped him up there and made it look
like he was just testifying to be a good citizen
and that he didn't want anything in exchange for his testimony.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Total why, And so I knew within the first day
I met Doreen that this case was sideways.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
And all of this is happening in the ramp up
to the historic run of Ken Thompson.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
During the election in twenty twelve thirteen, a lot of
this news about angel di Pietro came out, and again
the idea that she could be hired by Hines as
a prosecutor and be Nicolozzi's colleague years later just so
absurd on his face that Ken he asked me about
what is all this? In my view, he wanted to
(43:31):
campaign on Djuka. Ironically enough, and maybe it was my
mistake at the time, but I told him, I don't
want to talk to you about anything Juka related because
you're probably going to be the next DA And I'm
telling you right now, I'm going to be coming to
you to right this wrong. And I look back and
one of my sins in this case is probably not
unloading to him, because ironically, what he would have probably
(43:55):
done is campaigned on it.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
So Ken Thompson challenges Hines against Long Eyes and the
primary he wins, and what does Joe Hines do? He'd
had to call in a favor from Albert's mother on
the King's County GOP Executive Committee and get the Wilson
Pacula waiver to allow him to run as a Republican.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
He pulled the sneaky political move to take a second
bite at the apple.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
But Ken Thompson, he wins. So now, Mark, at this point,
you're thinking it's time to resolve this once and for all. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
When we did bring the case to the Conviction Review Unit,
we presented them with all kinds of evidence, including literally hundreds,
if not thousands, of pages of medical records of John
Jucus Senior, who had the strokes that we talked about,
which meant that the Avido's story couldn't happened. We presented
them with the sworn affidavits of the two women who
were at that jailhouse visit, who denied that conversation ever
(44:47):
took place. We presented them with overwhelming proof of how
Angel and Albert clearly testified falsely and how it contradicted
what they told the police and contradicted all the other
available evidence.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
And while this is in the CiU, we're talking twenty thirteen,
twenty fourteen. Amazingly, this is when the recantation start rolling
in so In twenty fourteen, Lauren Calciano recanted. Here's her quote.
I have regretted this testimony since I was first pressured
to claim this by law enforcement officials. I repeatedly told
them that he did not have any information regarding John's
a legend involvement in this crime. Law enforcement pressured and
(45:22):
frightened me to the point that I ultimately relented and
told them what they wanted to hear. Specifically, I was
pressured to admit that John had told me that he
gave Tony Russell a gun before Tony shot and killed
Mark Fisher. She goes on to say law enforcement officials
suggested that I was involved in the aftermathod the crime
by telling me that Albert Cleary had told them that
I removed a gun, bag or evidence from John's house.
(45:44):
Although this was untrue, I recognized the seriousness of this claim.
Law enforcement officers threatened me with jail and told me
that I could be charged with obstruction and or perjury.
Ada Nicolazzi told me that if I did not cooperate
with her, the police would show open my place of
employment with a subpoena. Ada Nicolozzi repends the very personal
issue between John and me, which was discussed only in
our private letter. She told me, you do not want
(46:06):
this to come out of trial. I interpreted this as
a not so subtle threat that I would be publicly
humiliated by the DA if I did not cooperate. Adia
Nicolozzi and detectives told me that they were aware that
my father was in prison and that by not cooperating
with them, I was quote going to make this hard
on him and my family. More than any other factor,
this threat influenced me to testify in the manner that
(46:26):
they desired. Now this thing goes on for eight full pages.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
She also, in her affidavit, explained how Albert Cleary lied
because I was there and what he said was not
true either. And she also gave a little insight into
what ghetto Mafia was. She said, I was around these
people during this time period. In Ghetto Mafia is the
name of a bunch of local kids and knuckleheads, not
some sophisticated street gang. We also gave them a sworn
(46:53):
Affid Davit from if you recall when we talked about
Albert Cleary, the guy that he said was the boss
of the gang, who had spoken to John about let's
catch a body and that's why maybe Mark Fisher was shot,
And he very calmly explained under oath that I was
going to college in North Carolina and I was not
the leader of a gang. And John and I did
(47:15):
not discuss how to get a body or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
And then John Evito recan'ts.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
He did and a veto. We got all of his
Riker's Island jail record. Sure enough. He was a diagnosed
paranoid schizophrenic who had been taking psychotropic drugs, including Sarahquill,
and part of his symptoms and what Sarah Quill treats
are people who suffer auditory hallucinations. So it turns out
(47:42):
that the guy who says I overheard a man who
can't speak ask questions about a murder. You can't make
this up, had a history of actually hearing voices and
seeing snakes was another one of his visual hallucinations. We
had many, many meetings with their conviction review unit, and
(48:03):
they declined to overturn the conviction, either on innocence or
on any constitutional violations.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Once Ken Thompson took over, there was twenty five generations
and that gave me so much hope. The difference between
me and all those other guys is that the ADA
that put them in jail doesn't work there anymore. But
when it came to me, when Ken Thompson got elected,
he didn't fire Nicolazzi, so she did still work there.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
When Jonavito and Lauren Calciano and others at risk to
themselves their controverting sworn testimony with new sworn testimony when
they went in to see the conviction Review Unit, what
the DA did was record them, swear them in, make transcripts,
and put them under oath. When the Brooklyn DA witnesses
(48:49):
were interviewed Anna Sega, Nicolazzi, others, they weren't sworn. There's
no record of their interviews, and the report has never
been made public. It's never been shared, like so many
others that they do share. It's as if they viewed
the JUGA conviction review as an exercise in preparing for
a post conviction motion and locking down these witnesses to
(49:12):
cross examine them if they testify for the defense.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
They covered for her instead of doing justice like they
should have. I mean, there was a mountain of evidence
that pointed away from me, and they just didn't care.
You know, they denied me and use what we gave
them to try to count me in the course.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
This was in late fourteen, and by the first couple
of months and fifteen we filed the motion that culminated
in a reversal in February of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Yeah, well, I got the reversal of the John of
Vido issue and the fact that Nikolauzi did give him benefits.
My jury should have known about that. I got an
unanimous decision this kid should be reversed and he should
get a new trial. And then I go back down
to Ryka's Island and I sit there for a year
and a half.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
And during the discuss process, you discover this recording that
was made with a guy named ingram Ada.
Speaker 3 (50:05):
Nicolazzi made a recording in two thousand and five before
the trial. And this was a guy who was probably
trying to help himself somehow, you know. He told them
he had information and he said things that she didn't
want to hear.
Speaker 4 (50:21):
Joseph ingram was in the same cell block as John
and traveled to Bellevue for medical treatment one day with
Antonio Russo, and him and Russo were on the bus
chit chatting.
Speaker 5 (50:33):
He said.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
Russo admitted he did this alone, that I wasn't there,
I had nothing to do with it, none of that.
Speaker 4 (50:38):
And Russo admitted to Ingram that I tried to get
John to take the gun after the murder. I went
to his house and he wouldn't do it. He told
me leave go. No, this tape was not disclosed prior
to trial. It was disclosed to me in twenty eighteen,
and when the DA was contemplating a retrial, they actually
(51:01):
so desperate to get Juka they sent these detectives up
there to interview Russo to secure his cooperation to testify
against John, and instead what he tells them is I
did it alone with my own gun.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
But the new trial was never actualized, so for now
they didn't have to contend with this evidence. In June
twenty nineteen, the New York Court of Appeals reinstated the
conviction that you had reversed in twenty eighteen, and John
went back to state prison.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
And it was obvious by the decision that they didn't
know the facts of the case.
Speaker 4 (51:32):
Although they agreed with us that Nicolazzi suppressed evidence, they
argued it was not material to the outcome of trial,
which is reasoning, which is mind boggling, given that Nicolozzi's
whole summation, as I told you earlier, was about how
critical a witness A. Vito was, and how credible he was,
(51:53):
and how altruistic he was, and how he established the
real theory of what happened. And one would think that
if the defense had known the full story about his
credibility and demolished him as it should have been, that
would somehow have impacted the significance of his testimony. But
in the five to one opinion against us, they argued
it wasn't material because a Veto had been impeached about
(52:15):
other things. And it was Judge Rivera, in a very
lengthy descent, who explained why that reasoning was flawed, and
why his credibility on this particular issue is so important,
and why the behavior of the trial prosecutor was intended
to mislead the judge, the jury, and defense. You don't
(52:36):
usually see a judge of the Court of Appeals call
out a prosecutor and essentially say you engaged in deliberate
misconduct in violation of your ethical responsibilities. But again in Brooklyn,
nobody cares.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
They do care, it seems though, about bending over backwards
and doing mental gymnastics to maintain this inexplicable wrongful conviction,
which as they did when you were able to get
a hearing on this Brady material, this recording that was
made with a guy named Ingram in front of Justice
Danny Chun.
Speaker 4 (53:08):
Now, I have sworn statements, and there's been sworn testimony
from Russo's lawyer and from Sam Gregory that they didn't
get this evidence and they would have remembered it if
they did. And then we had testimony from Nicolotzi who said,
I can't say whether I did or didn't, but if
I did, it wasn't on purpose, but I probably did.
And this was litigated a couple of years ago in
front of Justice Chun, who found that the DA probably
(53:32):
disclosed it, notwithstanding the fact that Russo's lawyer and Sam
Gregory explained why this would have been significant evidence and
steps they would have taken had they known about it
back then. But nevertheless, Justice Chun found that we did
not satisfy our burden that it wasn't disclosed. And I
just respectfully because I like him personally. But the ruling
(53:56):
on that case is just flat out one hundred percent wrong.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
So that brings us to twenty twenty three, at which
point I believe there was a petition to the governor
to appoint a special prosecutor taking the case out of Brooklyn.
But eventually John and Doreen were looking for new blood,
and they found an attorney here in Brooklyn named James Henning, And,
perhaps without some of the baggage from Mark's strategy, Albert Cleary,
(54:26):
after twenty one years with no contact from John since
his conviction, decided to unburden himself and go on the
record now. As we presumed, he and Angel Dpahro were
targeted early on when they circled the wagons in an
attempt to protect themselves from both law enforcement and Anthony Russo.
Not only had they threatened Albert with prosecution, but also
(54:48):
with dragging his mother in for the grand jury. In
his sworn affidavit, he recalls that he was convinced that
John's prosecution was inevitable and that he needed to protect
himself and his family, so he cooperated and molded his
statements to the state's narrative, even as their needs changed. Now,
he admits that the whole ghetto mafia street cred business
(55:12):
was just made up. That John never told him about
ordering Russo to show Fisher what's up, nor had he
given Russo a gun, which begs a question that has
bothered me since I found out about this case. Why
couldn't investigators just accept that Russo did this alone, like
he said to Ingram before trial and again in twenty eighteen.
(55:34):
What's it that Cleary and Dpetro were so buttoned up
that they got, you know, hungry for another body? Thinking
that someone else was involved? Was the mafia theory in
the age of the Sopranos just so irresistible?
Speaker 2 (55:47):
Who knows? Now?
Speaker 1 (55:49):
Henning's new four to forty motion just one an evidentiary hearing,
but curiously not on actual innocence, only on newly discovered evidence,
which is a shame considering that that will exclude the
totality of exculpatory evidence, misconduct, and constitutional violations that we've
just covered here. Instead, Judge Danny Chun has only agreed
(56:12):
to hear Albert Cleary and Lauren Calciano's recantations. It turns
out that her powerful recantation quoted earlier was never ruled
on in court. So we really hope this hearing isn't
just some opportunity for Danny Chun to try to ignore
the entire context of John's innocence and deny him again
(56:36):
on the grounds that these two recantations they're not enough
to overturn the conviction get John a new trial. And
I mean, take a second, imagine a new trial without
Cleary Calciano, Dpietro Bajari or a veto, just Anthony Russo
saying he did it by himself with his own gun.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
So, if this goes as I sincerely hope I'll be
able to keep a promise that I made John back
in twenty twenty two, I'm going to buy you one
of those giant beers at Farrell's. You know where to
find me as soon as you get home. Everyone else
stave vigilant because they only really do their dirt in
the dark. And with that, I'll leave you with Bedro
(57:23):
and John's closing thoughts from the original episode.
Speaker 4 (57:27):
I know that you know, in the eyes of the
Brooklyn DA at this point, they just wish we would
go away and fade away, and he would do his
time and Doreen would stop fighting. I believe in this
one hundred percent. I have no doubt that John was
wrongfully convicted. I have confidence in his actual innocence. I
believed my core that he didn't commit this crime, and
that's after reviewing all the evidence. And I certainly believe
(57:50):
and know, based on my review of the evidence of
the law that his rights were violated several different ways,
and that this was not a trial. It was a
railroad just Brooklyn style justice in the Charles Hines administration,
and those skeletons are still there.
Speaker 3 (58:07):
It's just been too much suffering for too long. It's
wrong palm on top and wrong palm on top of injustice.
It's an ongoing tragedy. Not only am I being affected,
but my family is being crushed for this. They took
my youth for me and all the experiences I would
have had it, and I feel like a financial burden
on my family too. I can anchor around their neck.
(58:28):
And my mother is a getting older now on I
pray every day that I can come home while she's
still alive and she makes it. And they took all
that time away from me that I was supposed to
have with her. Being in prison wrongfully is much different
than being here for something you actually did. That's what
me and a lot of these other guys have already
been on your show have in common. That's why I
feel it's touch it for them, some of them who
(58:49):
I even never met. Because when you're here for something
you actually did, I see these other guys they get
into a routine and they just accept it. But when
you hear wrongfully, it's impossible for you to accept.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
(59:27):
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company number one.
Speaker 1 (59:43):
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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