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December 30, 2007
The New York Times

Editorial: A Conviction Overturned

Could Martin Tankleff be the next Jeffrey Deskovic?

The question is a natural one when you look at their outwardly similar stories. They are men from the New York suburbs — Mr. Tankleff from Long Island, Mr. Deskovic from Westchester — who as teenagers were accused of vicious murders. Each was convicted and sentenced to a long prison term. Each spent years protesting his innocence and fighting to get the authorities to look at new evidence that he said would exonerate him.

In each case, physical evidence against the defendants was lacking or nonexistent. The men were convicted largely because of their own words — confessions to the police that they later disowned. Mr. Tankleff said detectives had tricked him into confessing; Mr. Deskovic said his confession had been coerced.

Mr. Deskovic spent 16 years in prison for crimes he did not commit: the rape and murder of a high school classmate. From behind bars, he pleaded with the Westchester County prosecutor, Jeanine Pirro, to check DNA samples from the crime scene against a criminal database, but she repeatedly refused. When Ms. Pirro finally left office, her successor, Janet DiFiore, agreed to the test. The sample pointed to another man, in prison for another murder, who then confessed. Mr. Deskovic walked free late last year.

Mr. Tankleff, who spent 17 years in prison after being convicted of murdering his parents in 1988, has not been exonerated. But after many fruitless appeals, he recently won a round in court. His conviction was overturned on Dec. 21 by a state appeals court, which ruled that a judge, in a decision last year, should never have dismissed new testimony from dozens of witnesses that Mr. Tankleff had submitted in his quest for a new trial.

Now that Mr. Tankleff has won another day in court, his case deserves a dispassionate, thorough and honest re-examination. Mr. Tankleff’s defenders insist that this is not possible from the Suffolk County district attorney, Thomas Spota. They are demanding that he hand the case to a special prosecutor. While Mr. Spota had no direct involvement in the Tankleff prosecution, which was tried by his predecessor, he and his office do have multiple connections to some members of the large cast of characters in this convoluted case. A detective who lied to Mr. Tankleff while taking his confession, for example, had been previously defended by Mr. Spota, then a private lawyer, in a corruption investigation, and later when the detective was accused of assault.

The law can be swift and sure when making a case against a defendant and hustling him off to prison. When it is found to have made grave errors, it must be just as honest and forceful in correcting them. We are counting on Mr. Spota to pursue the fairest case the evidence now supports. Or to back away if — as so many on Mr. Tankleff’s side insist — the evidence just isn’t there.