Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez is making a significant move to vacate the conviction of a man who has long maintained his innocence about a 1988 murder for which he was convicted. Brian Kendall, 55, after pleading guilty to manslaughter and spending nearly 16 years behind bars, may soon see his name cleared, as Gonzalez's office has found credible evidence to support Kendall's account of the events, according to a statement from the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office.
The case revolves around the murder of Raphael Reyes, who was killed inside a Flatbush game room where he worked back in 1988. Initially, police reports suggested a group was chasing the shooter, and eyewitness descriptions did not match Kendall. Despite this, and inconsistencies among the witnesses' accounts, Kendall was pressured into a guilty plea, a decision that has haunted both him and the justice system for more than three decades.
"Our system failed Brian Kendall when he was encouraged to plead guilty to a horrific crime without a full understanding of the evidence against him," Gonzalez said. His office's reinvestigation, carried out by the Conviction Review Unit (CRU), has highlighted this miscarriage of justice. The CRU found that eyewitnesses corroborated Kendall's claim of chasing the actual shooter and uncovered police dispatch recordings that further supported his version of events, as per the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office report.
Moreover, Kendall's original defense lawyer was unaware of critical developments that could have altered the course of the trial, including the reliability of a key witness who by the, time of trial may have become unavailable and another who had promised leniency for separate charges. This lack of information fed into the flawed advice that led to Kendall's guilty plea. Despite the plea and Kendall's subsequent admissions during parole hearings, Gonzalez states that this does not diminish the likelihood of his innocence.
Justice may now be served for Kendall, who is expected to be present via video hookup for the court proceedings led by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Matthew D'Emic. The CRU's extensive work, now identifying 41 wrongful convictions since 2014, and still with about 60 open investigations, reflects an ongoing effort to correct past mistakes and ensure the integrity of the justice system, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office.
