 | Marty Tankleff had just turned 17 when he was arrested for killing his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff, in their home on Long Island, NY. Based on a dubious, unsigned "confession" extracted from him following hours of interrogation by a detective with a questionable background, Marty was convicted and sentenced to 50 years to life, and has already served 17 years in maximum security prisons for a crime he did not commit. Now, based on new evidence tracked down by a private investigator, a court hearing is underway that could free Marty. But can Marty ever find justice in Suffolk County? Click here to read more. |
Tankleff Tip Line: 718-570-4183
A confidential phone tip line has been set up for anyone with information or evidence that would help uncover the truth in the Marty Tankleff case. All calls will be held strictly confidential, and no person will be required to leave a name or phone number. Marty's private investigator, Jay Salpeter, will review all leads. No information is too minor, as it may form a piece of a larger puzzle.
FUNDRAISER FOR MARTY TANKLEFF DEFENSE FUND WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21ST, 6-10 P.M. IN MANHATTAN
Reception and Silent Art Auction, with Special Guest Speakers.
The Puffin Room
435 Broome Street
New York City
35 admission (15 for students), with all proceeds going to the Marty Tankleff Defense Fund to continue the legal, investigative and advocacy efforts.
Pay at the door or send a check made payable to Soury Communications/Tankleff Defense Fund to: Soury Communications, 150 West 25th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10001.
CASE STATUS:
On April 17, Marty's lawyers filed for appeal in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, in Brooklyn.
In a sign of the extraordinary support the case has received, several high profile organizations and individuals have submitted supporting letters to the court, including the Innocence Project, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), Steve Drizin of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University on behalf of the Innocence Network, and false confessions expert Saul Kassin of Williams College.
Barry Scheck, Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Innocence Project, said in a statement, "We’ve taken the unusual step of writing a letter along with our motion because the facts of this case are so strong, and because the lower-court ruling that denied Martin Tankleff a new trial was so misguided and troubling. The court improperly ignored new research on factors associated with false confessions that severely undermines the credibility of the statement taken by Suffolk County police. The police tactics in this case are exactly what leads to false confessions and causes innocent people to be convicted while the true perpetrators remain free.”
Read the Innocence Project Letter
Read the Innocence Network Letter
Read the NACDL Letter
Read Saul Kassin's Affidavit
Newsday Op-Ed by Scott Christianson - April 21, 2006
"Tankleff Case Cries Out for Answers - Murder Probe Needs to be Reopened to Learn the Truth - and What Happened to Justice"
New York Times Story - April 21, 2006
"Legal Network and Defense Lawyers Join Effort to Win Appeal for Son in L.I. Couple's Death"
Statement From the Family of Marty Tankleff - March 17, 2006
We are shocked and angered at the ruling by Suffolk County Judge Stephen Braslow. There is overwhelming new evidence that Marty Tankleff is innocent. Not only that, there is more than enough evidence to arrest and most likely convict the real killers of Seymour and Arlene Tankleff. Having sat through months of testimony, we know there is only one possible conclusion: that Marty Tankleff deserves a new trial.
What are we to conclude from this ruling other than that truth and justice were once again trumped by the lies and corruption that have contaminated Suffolk County law enforcement for a generation? How is it possible that the mountain of new evidence presented in the hearing did not meet the test that it would likely have changed the original jury’s verdict?
We were shocked when Judge Braslow refused to recognize the blatant conflicts of Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota and appoint a special prosecutor, in effect licensing the DA to engage in witness intimidation and other unethical tactics. How little has changed since the 1980s, when this case began, and when the State Investigation Commission found rampant corruption—including coerced confessions—in the Suffolk County Police Department and District Attorney’s office. Perhaps we were naïve to hope Marty Tankleff could ever receive justice in Suffolk County.
There is overwhelming evidence not only of Marty’s innocence, but that he is a victim of a wrongful conviction based on a false confession taken by a detective found to have previously perjured himself. There is also evidence this detective may have been bribed. All impartial observers—including retired judges and district attorneys, law professors, cops, wardens and prison guards—know that Marty Tankleff deserves a new trial. And a growing number of Suffolk County citizens are aware that in keeping Marty in jail, the DA is coddling violent felons and allowing the real murderers of Arlene and Seymour Tankleff to walk the streets.
We are not only Marty Tankleff’s relatives, but the murder victims’ sisters, brother, nephews, nieces and cousins. We look forward to getting out of Suffolk County and into a fair venue, and it should not have to wait for an appeal.
Governor George Pataki and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer must now step in and appoint a special prosecutor to ensure justice for Arlene, Seymour and Marty Tankleff, and for the people of New York.
We thank Marty’s friends and supporters, including those who don’t know Marty but whose sense of justice is no less offended, because Marty Tankleff could be any of us.
We have believed in Marty’s innocence from day one, and we will not rest until we bring him home.
Marcella Alt Falbee, Ron Falbee, Carol Falbee, Carolyn Falbee, Suzanne Falbee, Marianne McClure, Mike McClure, Jennifer Cooney, Dan Cooney, Norman Tankleff, Ruth Tankleff, Autumn Tankleff-Asness, Howard Asness, Jeff Tankleff, Shelley Tankleff, Landon Asness, Steve Tankleff, Lynn Kadan, Larry Kadan, Adam Kadan, David Kadan, Kristi McClure, Doug McClure, Joy Picirrillo, Tom Picirrilo, Kevin Picirrillo, Harold Alt
Click here for our recent piece on the New York State Investigation Commission's excoriating report on Suffolk County law enforcement agencies around the time Marty's "confession" was taken.
NY Times Op-Ed by Marty's old classmate and editor of their high school newspaper, Professor Marc Howard of Georgetown - click here.
NEWSDAY EDITORIAL: The Tankleff case: New testimony should make it easy for judge to decide about new trial
Newsday, December 28, 2005
Now is the time for Judge Stephen Braslow to decide whether to order a new trial for Martin Tankleff. Though more witnesses may come forward, the vividly exculpatory testimony of Joseph Guarascio last week was a proper line of demarcation, an exclamation point, a good place to stop hearing testimony, take a breath and render a decision.
In one sense, it won't be easy for Braslow, because this is not just about one young man convicted of murdering his parents in 1988. It's also a stubborn scar of a nastier era of Long Island jurisprudence, when Suffolk homicide detectives relied far too much on confessions, as a Newsday series and a state investigation showed. So, to grant Tankleff a new trial is, in effect, to call that system into question again, because it was Tankleff's unsigned and quickly retracted confession that led a jury to convict him and a judge to send him away to state prison.
In another sense, Guarascio's testimony made Braslow's burden easier. Braslow did the right thing in reconvening the months-long hearing under Section 440 of the state's Criminal Procedure Law, which governs motions for a new trial, based on new evidence. Once the Tankleff defense team obtained an affidavit from Guarascio, it became imperative that he tell his story in open court, so prosecutors could cross-examine him and Braslow could hear him in person, observe his demeanor, gauge his truthfulness.
What Guarascio said on the stand was that his father, Joseph Creedon, admitted that he and an associate killed Seymour and Arlene Tankleff. Beyond that, Guarascio said, his father told him that he paid 100,000 to James McCready, the detective who elicited the confession from Tankleff by telling him a lie. Guarascio said Creedon told him that what he wanted from McCready was "to keep his name out of it."
In cross-examination, prosecutor Leonard Lato failed to shake Guarascio. But he asked the boy, without reference to any testimony, whether he learned Tankleff "was buying, and you decided to sell." Braslow ordered that stricken. Whatever the judge thinks of earlier witnesses, if he rejects Lato's dark hint and decides that Guarascio, 17, is motivated only by a desire to do the right thing, to tell the truth about events that shook Tankleff's life when he was also only 17, Braslow will have a fairly easy decision after all.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
A Suffolk County family recently wrote the following letter to Newsday, which did not publish it:
Dear Editor,
We are writing to you to express our disappointment with the response of District Attorney Tom Spota to all of the new evidence revealed in the Martin Tankleff hearing. Years ago, while Tom was in private practice, he represented a family member of ours and we built up a personal and professional relationship with him. During this time we discussed Marty’s case with him more than once and he expressed that he always believed that Marty was innocent. In fact, on one occasion he even stated that he had seen photos from the scene and there was no physical way that one person could have committed these crimes. At the time Tom Spota also stated that he hoped that one day someone would come forward to clear Marty and prove his innocence. When we originally heard the hearing was taking place in Suffolk County, we felt that justice would finally be served because Spota would take the opportunity to right the injustice that had taken place years ago and Marty would finally get a fair hearing. You can only imagine our shock when Tom Spota decided to fight against someone he told us he believed was innocent just to cover up all the corruption in Suffok County. Instead of “seeking truth” as the DA’s website states, he has chosen to uphold a wrongful conviction, allowing known criminals to go free while an innocent man sits in jail. His decision to follow this course of action has been a huge disappointment for us. We only hope that Judge Braslow will see the obvious truth that Marty is innocent and justice will finally be served.
Sincerely,
Colleen and Kelli Paschke
Newsday Editorial
Reopen Tankleff hearing
Judge should hear new-found witness
August 10, 2005
A fresh and powerful piece of evidence has shown up in Martin Tankleff's pursuit of a new trial for the 1988 murders of his parents. It's an affidavit from the son of Joseph Creedon, the man Tankleff says is a prime suspect among those he calls the real killers. Creedon's 17-year-old son says that his father confirmed to him that Creedon participated in the killings. Judge Stephen Braslow, who presided over the hearing on Tankleff's new-trial request, must take this evidence seriously, even if it means reopening the hearing.
Martin Tankleff was convicted in 1990 of killing his parents, Seymour and Arlene, in their Belle Terre home. The prime evidence was Tankleff's confession, though he did not sign it and repudiated it immediately. Tankleff says the moving force behind the murders was Jerry Steuerman, a bagel-store owner heavily in debt to Seymour Tankleff.
Over the years, Tankleff tried several times under section 440 of the state's Criminal Procedure Law to seek a new trial on the basis of new evidence. The most recent motion resulted in a hearing that ended in February. In June, Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Leonard Lato filed a huge brief that dismissed the credibility of testimony at the hearing implicating Creedon. Tankleff must answer it later this month.
But last week, Tankleff's defense team produced the new affidavit and asked Braslow either to vacate his conviction and set him free, or to reopen the hearing to hear testimony from Creedon's son, Joseph John Guarascio.
The youth, who lives in Florida with his mother, had not seen Creedon for nine years, until Creedon came to Florida in early 2004. A few weeks later, Guarascio came north for a funeral and saw Creedon again. In the affidavit, Guarascio says he asked if Creedon had committed the Tankleff murders, and Creedon said, "Yeah, I did it," and gave details. "I didn't tell anyone about this because I was afraid of my father and what he might do to me or my mother," Guarascio says in the document. Finally, the teen's mother found him crying in bed, and he revealed what Creedon had told him.
Given the youth's fear of his father, it's hard to imagine why he would fabricate Creedon's admissions. And if Braslow were to grant a new trial, it's hard to imagine a jury convicting Tankleff if it believed Guarascio. The best way for Judge Braslow to explore the truth of the affidavit is to listen to Guarascio in person at a reopened hearing.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
Joey "Guns" Creedon's son: "My Father Told Me That He Killed Marty Tankleff's Parents." Click here to read his affidavit, filed today along with a motion to vacate Marty's conviction or reopen the hearing. Following is a statement from the Tankleff family:
"Enough is enough. Not only should Marty be released, we call on Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota to arrest Joseph Creedon, Peter Kent and Jerry Steuerman for the murders of Arlene and Seymour Tankleff. If DA Spota refuses to enforce the law, then it’s time for Governor George Pataki, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer or the U.S. Attorney to step in. How many witnesses need to swear that Joseph Creedon confessed to these murders before the officials sworn to protect us start doing their jobs? This statement is chilling in its alleged details of how my aunt and uncle were savagely murdered. These people either should be arrested or those in authority should be called upon to explain why not."
- Ron Falbee, nephew of murder victim Arlene Tankleff and cousin of Marty Tankleff
August 3, 2005
Newsday
Web of intrigue in Tankleff case
by Paul Vitello
February 6, 2005
You and I - "the people" in the "People v. Martin Tankleff" case - have a less complicated question to answer than whether Martin Tankleff is innocent of the murders of his mother and father, as he claims.
The convicted killer, now 33, has been seeking a new trial based on new evidence that supposedly supports his alternate version of the bludgeoning and slashing of Seymour and Arlene Tankleff in their Belle Terre home Sept. 7, 1988, when Martin was 17.
It involves shady businessmen, drug enforcers, killers for hire. There's a new witness who claims to have been the get-away driver for the alleged killers, another who claims to have heard a hitman bragging about his role. One alleged hitman has supposedly admitted being offered the contract to kill the Tankleffs and, after deciding against the job, passing it along to another hitman.
It's a tangled scenario further tangled by the underworld nature of most of its players' lives - by men for whom information is a floating currency in the market of plea-bargaining, score-settling and, by Tankleff's account, occasional bouts of conscience-clearing.
The question for us though isn't about Martin Tankleff at all, but about the role of the prosecutor who has spent the past year trying to block Tankleff's bid for a new trial.
He is Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota, a prosecutor who has earned a formidable reputation these past few years as a crusader against corrupt politics in Brookhaven, against unscrupulous businessmen, and against the slimy, self-dealing policies of the Diocese of Rockville Centre in its long-standing protection of pederast priests.
The question, then, is what's a nice guy like Spota doing in a case like Tankleff's, where he has personal conflicts of interest almost as tangled as Tankleff's alternate universe of hitmen?
It should be said that although there are more than a million people in Suffolk County, it sometimes seems as if the vast majority of the cops, criminals, lawyers and judges there are personal acquaintances. You could probably find the fingerprints of some of them on all of them, or vice versa. And before becoming district attorney, Spota was among the county's most prominent criminal attorneys.
But Spota's conflicts in this case - which were the subject of hearings within the hearings on Tankleff's bid for a new trial - seem extraordinary.
He was the personal attorney to the Suffolk police detective, James McCready, who wrung a much-disputed confession from the 17-year-old Tankleff on the day of his parents' murder. (Spota represented him in a case in which McCready was accused of assaulting a woman during a traffic dispute.)
During a period in the 1980s when the Suffolk homicide squad was under state investigation for alleged abuse of suspects and tampering with evidence, Spota was legal counsel to the Suffolk Detectives Association.
Spota's law firm once handled the drug-related case involving Todd Steuerman, the son of Seymour Tankleff's business partner, Jerry Steuerman, whom Martin Tankleff accuses as the contractor behind the contract-killing of his parents.
In a still more-troubling conflict that emerged in the hearings, William Wexler, the law associate of a friend and onetime political sponsor of Spota, former Babylon Democratic chairman Jack Braslow, took as his client one of the men prepared to testify on Tankleff's behalf. The man, Brian Scott Glass, soon thereafter withdrew his offer to help Tankleff's case. And shortly after that, Glass received lenient treatment from Spota's office in a separate, pending criminal case.
Making the deal more unseemly still, Jack Braslow, the associate of Wexler, is the father of Suffolk County Court Judge Stephen Braslow, who presided over the months-long hearing into Tankleff's case for a new trial. The hearings ended Friday. A decision is expected in the spring.
Maybe one of the hazards of being immersed in the details of one complicated web - the conspiracy described by Martin Tankleff's attorneys Bruce Barket of Garden City and Barry Pollack of Washington, D.C., as the real story of the 1988 Tankleff murders - is to become overly suspicious of other webs that are equally complicated, but actually benign.
But that's a fact of life, and one of the reasons public officials are well-advised to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest almost as rigorously as the fact.
Spota does not publicly discuss his apparent conflicts. He left his defense to the assistant he assigned to the Tankleff case, Leonard Lato, who argues that there are no conflicts that justify handing off the case to an independent or special prosecutor, as Tankleff's attorneys requested. And Judge Braslow agreed.
For the moment, Tankleff's life hangs on the threads of other people's good faith - from that of the judge in his case to the cadre of true believers who include his family and a small volunteer army of lawyers, investigators and public relations consultants who have taken up his cause. One of these, private investigator Jay Salpeter, who has been working the case for years, wears the haunted expression of one who sees Tankleff's 50-years-to-life sentence as the virtual equivalent of the third murder of Sept. 7, 1988.
But for you and me, the question in the case of the People v. Tankleff is not about Tankleff. It's about how we define the responsibility of those elected to act in our name.
Is it the responsibility of those elected officials to win and defend justice - or to win and defend convictions? The answer is the only simple one in this story.
The New York Times
January 30, 2005
Op-Ed
After 14 Years, Another Crack at Justice
By Scott Christianson
Fourteen years after one of the most controversial double-murder convictions in Long Island history, the Martin Tankleff case threatens to further tarnish Suffolk County's justice system.
Hearings on Mr. Tankleff's effort to overturn his convictions in the murder of his parents, Arlene and Seymour Tankleff, have been going on in Riverhead since July 19. Both sides are expected to complete their arguments when the proceedings resume this week. After weighing the briefs, Judge Stephen L. Braslow of Suffolk County Court will then have to decide whether to reject Mr. Tankleff's arguments, reverse the conviction and order a new trial, or cut loose the wrongfully convicted man.
Either way, because of the questions raised at the hearings, the case is bound to continue reverberating.
Close observers, however, agree that Judge Braslow will be hard-pressed to find convincing grounds upon which to deny Mr. Tankleff's motion for a new trial. Mr. Tankleff's newly discovered evidence has been far more extensive than what county prosecutors used in 1990 to gain his conviction and sentence of 50 years to life.
But here's the question: Given all the new evidence that's been uncovered, why hasn't the prosecutor moved in the interests of justice to reverse the conviction and convene a new grand jury?
It started with a 911 call. On the morning of Sept. 7, 1988, the Suffolk police responded to a frantic emergency call from an upscale house in Belle Terre, on Long Island's North Shore. They arrived to find the caller, 17-year-old Martin Tankleff, dazed after waking up and finding his adoptive parents covered with blood. Bludgeoned and nearly decapitated, Arlene Tankleff was already dead. Her horribly wounded husband, Seymour Tankleff, was in a coma and would die a few weeks later.
Mr. Tankleff, a slightly built youth, had no criminal history or record of mental illness. He claimed that his father's estranged business partner, Jerard Steuerman, who described himself as Long Island's bagel baron, owed the Tankleffs hundreds of thousands of dollars and had been the last one to leave a high-stakes card game at the house earlier that morning.
Suffolk County detectives took the youth in for questioning. When he didn't confess, one of the detectives, K. James McCready, pretended to receive a telephone call telling him that Seymour Tankleff had revived under adrenaline to blame his son for the attack. Shortly afterward, the younger Mr. Tankleff broke down under the pressure and confessed.
There was no taped or signed confession. Martin Tankleff quickly recanted his statement and proclaimed his innocence. But the authorities wouldn't let go.
Mr. Tankleff's lawyer at the time pointed out that Suffolk County law enforcement was under federal and state investigation for corruption and other misconduct. The State Investigation Commission was targeting prosecutors and police for botching major cases by, among other things, coercing false confessions and engaging in cover-ups. The commission's 1989 report also said that Mr. McCready had committed perjury in an earlier homicide case (which he denied). But the trial judge kept these facts out of the trial.
Mr. Steuerman, the business partner, faked his own death after the attacks, fled to California and assumed a false identity. But the police never considered him a suspect. Mr. Tankleff was convicted and sent to prison for the rest of his life. Had a capital punishment law been on the books at the time, he could have been condemned to death.
The case might have ended there, except that Mr. Tankleff attracted some top-flight legal assistance and fought to prove his innocence. He appealed to the State Court of Appeals and even to the United States Supreme Court but didn't prevail. The case languished. Mr. Tankleff started losing his hair; his youth was gone.
Then a miracle happened. Jay Salpeter, a retired New York police homicide detective, was hired by Mr. Tankleff's lawyers to investigate the case. Mr. Salpeter obtained a written statement from a career criminal, Glenn Harris, that he had driven his longtime crime partner, Joseph Creedon, and an acquaintance Peter Kent to the Tankleff house that night. Mr. Salpeter also discovered that another witness had already come forward to say that Mr. Creedon had said he was involved in the Tankleff murders. This witness, along with Mr. Tankleff and Mr. Harris, passed polygraph examinations, and others substantiated their accounts.
Mr. Tankleff's lawyers shared this new information with the Suffolk County district attorney, Thomas J. Spota. When Mr. Spota did not investigate, they filed a motion seeking an evidentiary hearing in county court.
When Judge Braslow began to hear evidence in open court, it seemed that there would be a quick end to the matter. But the district attorney refused to grant Mr. Harris, the getaway driver, any immunity from prosecution for his testimony. As a result, Mr. Harris declined to testify. The judge also refused to grant immunity and even forbade Mr. Tankleff's lawyer Bruce A. Barket to speak with Mr. Harris.
But instead of simply hinging its case upon Mr. Harris's testimony, the Tankleff defense team has unleashed a cascade of new evidence, none of it effectively rebutted or discredited by the prosecution. Testimony from several witnesses has filled in more details about the alleged murder plot and suggested a cover-up by the Suffolk authorities.
Mr. Creedon, Mr. Harris and Mr. Kent have denied carrying out the Tankleff murders.
Witnesses and court records have established that Mr. Steuerman's son, Todd, was associated with Mr. Creedon in drug trafficking. Mr. Creedon has given sworn statements that Todd Steuerman shot him after he refused to cut out Martin Tankleff's tongue for Jerard Steuerman. Several witnesses have testified that the Steuermans' bagel store was used for drug dealing. Todd Steuerman was arrested and went to prison as a result of some of this activity, but his criminal background was kept out of the original Tankleff trial.
Some of the most potent evidence presented has involved Mr. Spota himself. Before he was elected district attorney as a Democrat in 2001, Mr. Spota represented Mr. McCready, the detective who obtained the Tankleff confession, both when he faced criminal charges and when he was under state investigation for perjury. In the 1980's, Mr. Spota also represented some police officers who were convicted of drug offenses. After the latest hearings started, Mr. Spota belatedly disclosed that his law firm had defended Todd Steuerman when he was charged with dealing drugs out of his father's bagel store. Yet Mr. Spota has repeatedly refused to recuse himself in the case or to yield to a special prosecutor.
It's true that when someone tries to get his conviction reversed, the burden is on the accused, not the prosecutor, to prove his case. Nor is Mr. Spota under a legal obligation to help Mr. Tankleff get a new trial. But trying to stonewall Mr. Tankleff's fight for justice is no way to get at the truth. And no matter what Judge Braslow decides about the future of Martin Tankleff, the questions that have been raised about police interrogation practices and Mr. Spota's ties to people involved in this case won't go away.
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Scott Christianson, a former executive assistant to the New York State director of criminal justice, is the author of "Innocent: Inside Wrongful Conviction Cases."
NY Law Journal Article on Marty - click here
Statement by Retired New York State
Supreme Court Justice Herbert A. Posner
IN SUPPORT OF A NEW TRIAL FOR MARTY TANKLEFF
I am a retired New York State Supreme Court Justice. I served 20 years (1982-2002) in both the Civil Term and the Criminal Term of that court. Prior to that I served six years on the New York City Civil Court. I entered judicial service after nine years in the New York State Assembly, where I was the Chairman of the Environmental Conservation Committee until December 31, 1975. I retired after 35 years of public service on December 31, 2001.
I first learned of the effort to obtain a new trial for Marty Tankleff when I received a letter from one of Marty’s supporters. He also sent me a number of legal briefs filed by Tankleff’s pro-bono attorneys in connection with a motion to vacate his conviction, including a motion to disqualify the office of the Suffolk County District Attorney. I subsequently read hundreds of pages of minutes from the hearing now being conducted by Judge Stephen Braslow, news accounts and family statements.
Twenty seven family members (all of the Tankleff relatives with the exception of a half sister who inherited all of the Tankleff estate) signed a statement on September 7, 2004 supporting Marty’s effort to obtain a new trial. One of the paragraphs in the statement best summarizes the mound of evidence (and seemingly ignored by the prosecution) produced by Marty’s attorney during the pending hearing: “We believe history will record the Marty Tankleff case not as the tragedy of one individual or of one family, but as an epic tale of corruption, conspiracy and cover up in the Suffolk County Criminal Justice System. Marty was in the wrong place at the wrong time, guilty only of waking up at the scene of a crime that morning. Marty Tankleff could be any of us”.
Tankleff’s lawyers place the blame for the double murder on a partner of Mr. Tankleff who had a financial motive for the homicides. This individual, a Jerry Steuerman, faked his own death shortly after the homicides and surfaced (under false identity) in California, after Marty was charged and arrested for the crime. People have come forward and given statements to the effect that Steuerman was involved in the crime. One witness testified that, not long after the Tankleff murders, he overheard Steuerman angrily tell someone he had already killed two people and that it wouldn’t matter if he killed another.
The new evidence presented at the hearing should have raised some serious doubts in the minds of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office. Fair minded members of the Justice System would want to do their own investigation. Unfortunately, such is not the case. I recall a rape conviction that I presided over (around the same time of the Tankleff trial) that created a doubt in my mind that the defendant was the serial rapist the Queens County police and prosecutors were seeking. The only evidence of guilt was the victim’s testimony. The prosecutor overplayed the questioning of the victim (to the strenuous objections of the defense attorney); and the prosecutor’s summation was highly improper (prompting a call for a mistrial). I delayed the sentencing (permitting the defendant to remain on bail), pending a quick appeal. The Appellate Court reversed the conviction for prosecutorial misconduct; and before a new trial could be held the real serial rapist was caught and convicted. He was a look alike. Justice had been served.
In the 200 plus Criminal trials I sat on, including about a dozen homicide cases, I had the opportunity to analyze many different defendants and the factual evidence in their cases. I believe I have a fairly good sense of when a person is guilty or innocent of the crimes charged. Based upon my reading and analyzing the new evidence in the Tankleff case, I am convinced that there is a serious doubt of Marty Tankleff’s guilt. Two out of five Justices in the Appellate Division also had doubts (People v. Tankleff, 606 N.Y.S. 2nd 707 (1993)). The dissenters believed that Tankleff’s “confession” was tainted. They concluded that: “In the view of the absence of any other evidence connecting the defendant to the murders, except for the confession which he disavowed at the trial, the indictments should be dismissed.” While it is too late to expect any court to throw out Marty’s confession, it is certainly not too late for the courts to grant him a new trial..