Our client was arrested on charges of alleged rape. The purported victim in this false arrest incident, a 13-year-old girl, claimed she was raped by three men at an apartment after being blindfolded and transported there by her cousin. When shown photos of potential suspects, the girl selected our client and two other co-defendants as the three men who raped her. Over the course of two years, our client maintained his innocence, turned down several pleas, and participated in DNA testing that ultimately did not indicate any evidence of rape. Our client was let out of jail, and all charges were dropped.
Before our client was arrested, the chief detective working on the case picked up the girl’s cousin. This is the one who the supposed victim said had taken her to the apartment where the rape occurred. She told the detective that she was admitted to a local hospital at the time the rape allegedly occurred, and that her cousin’s rape story was “nonsense.” The detective responded by telling the cousin that she would arrest her unless she admitted to taking the girl to the apartment. Fearing for her own safety, the cousin then went along with what the detective told her to say. All charges were eventually dropped in 2005 when our client stood steadfast. He hired us and we obtained the evidence proving that the girl’s cousin was indeed an inpatient at a local hospital during the week of the purported rape incident. This proved, as the cousin stated, that the detective forced her to lie about the events.
As a result, Ronemus & Vilensky sued the detective and police officers involved–as well as the City of New York assistant district attorneys who handled the case–for false arrest, malicious prosecution and civil rights claims. All of the assistant district attorneys admitted that they would not have prosecuted the case had they known about the detective’s actions, and in the end our New York City false arrest attorneys secured a $1 million settlement for our client.
