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A perjury case against a former New York City narcotics detective was thrown out mid-trial Tuesday after prosecutors acknowledged failing to turn over evidence as required to his defense.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office also said it was demoting the prosecutor who handled the case, which had accused ex-detective Joseph Franco of lying about witnessing drug deals. Because of the charges, hundreds of drug cases he'd worked were dismissed in the last few years because prosecutors disavowed them.
"New Yorkers must know that law enforcement, including prosecutors, are acting with the utmost integrity. We hold ourselves accountable to that standard," Manhattan DA's office spokesperson Doug Cohen said in a statement.
It said evidence disclosure in the case "violated our discovery requirements." Discovery is a legal term for documents and other material that prosecutors are legally bound to share with defendants' attorneys so they can prepare their clients' response.
The statement didn't detail what evidence had been improperly held back, and the case was sealed upon dismissal. A request for comment was sent to Franco's attorney, Howard Tanner.
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He told local media in statements that the DA's office had engaged in "repeated withholding and destruction of evidence, misrepresentations on the record and other ethical violations."
"But how does he get his reputation back?" asked Tanner, who said his client had never done anything wrong during his decorated 20-year police career. It ended in a 2020 firing after his indictment the prior year.
Former New York City Police Department Detective Joseph Franco, center, leaves Manhattan Supreme Court in New York, on April 24, 2019. A perjury case against Santos was thrown out after prosecutors failed to turn over evidence as required to his defense. (Alec Tabak via AP, File)
During the trial, prosecutors said video contradicted Franco’s claims to have seen illegal drug sales on several occasions. Tanner said the former detective might have flubbed some location details but didn’t deliberately lie and was "on trial for doing his job."
A judge dismissed the charges Tuesday at Tanner's request and with prosecutors' consent.
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The charges involved a handful of cases but spurred prosecutors in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx to disavow a total of hundreds of other convictions in cases involving Franco. The prosecutors didn’t say they had found evidence of alleged perjury in those cases, but they said they had lost certainty about his work.
Manhattan and Bronx prosecutors said they were continuing to review Franco's cases.
The district attorney's office in the Bronx, where 349 convictions related to Franco were dismissed, noted that a police department trial found he had given false grand jury testimony.
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That finding "provided us with a solid basis to conclude that Franco was an unreliable witness, and we should not stand behind any conviction based materially on Franco’s testimony," Bronx DA's office spokeswoman Patrice O’Shaughnessy said in statement. "We continue to evaluate the best course of action with the cases that are still under review."
The Brooklyn DA's office declined to comment.
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