… I don’t know precisely how to help. The complexity of the crimes law enforcement claims occurred is too absurdly convoluted to try and summarize. The original prosecution encompassed three years. The police claimed that five “perpetrators” were sexually assaulting “hundreds of children” for years.
The appeals effort encompassed 14 years; at minimum 12 different courts, over 30 judges, thousands of pages of motions, counter-motions, exhibits, affidavits and other documents.
So, how to answer the question, “What happened to the Jesse Friedman case”? Well….
- I served 13 years in prison before being released to parole, and then Capturing the Friedmans was released the following year.
- Six years after Capturing the Friedmans, the Federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals determined that there was “a reasonable likelihood that Jesse Friedman is innocent,” but failed to take action beyond ordering the Nassau County DA to open a re-investigation.
- In 2013, after three years of a closed-door clandestine “review” cloaked in secrecy and sprinkled with fairy-dust from a dubious “panel of experts,” the Nassau DA released a thousand-page report of lies, misdirection and dismissal of every claim (even those of sworn affidavits) that there could have been anything amiss with the police case against me.
- The following year my legal defense team filed another Motion to Vacate my conviction based upon newly discovered evidence. Within a quick few months, Judge Corrigan granted an evidentiary hearing based upon a claim of “Actual Innocence” and the processes of Demands for Discovery; subpoenas for over 50 witnesses; and preparations for what was tantamount to a new trial for me began.
- And then came the delays. Delays upon delays, upon delays by the Court; by the District Attorney’s office; by circumstances unforeseen, until….
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June 2018: After three years of delays, in a completely unrelated legal matter, the NYS Court of Appeals publishes a Decision in People v. Tiger. The ruling announces that the right to a hearing under an “Actual innocence” claim is only valid “after a conviction at trial” (and does not include convictions obtained through coerced guilty pleas.) This is the same court, the Chief Judge of New York State, who reviewed my Freedom of Information Law request just one year earlier.
This decision thereby ended a 14-year journey of motions, and appeals and courts. The decision is so unambiguous that had my Actual Innocence hearing not been postponed for three and a half years, and had I been exonerated with the charges dismissed, the District Attorney could have filed to have the exoneration nullified, and the conviction reinstated, and that motion would likely have been granted.