On August 3, 2023, a federal jury in the Eastern District of New York returned a verdict in favor of our client, MH, agreeing that NYPD Detective Kevin Arias and NYPD PO Kevin Lee (both now retired) had caused him to be wrongly prosecuted. The jury awarded MH $300,000 in compensation for the 11 months he spent in custody and $700,000 in punitive damages against the two defendants.
On September 3, 2013, several men robbed a crowded social club in Queens. The police arrived while the crime was in progress and the suspects (and dozens of patrons) fled into the street. Lee arrested MH and later told his fellow officers that a witness had identified MH as one of the robbers. This claim was fundamentally false. The witness, and many other victims, went straight to the local station house where this witness told Arias that he only saw one of the robbers and that it was definitely not MH. The defendant officers deliberately chose not to put MH in a line up or conduct any other identification procedures. Instead, they simply told prosecutors that the witness had identified MH as a guilty party. As a result, MH sat in jail for 11 months until prosecutors asked the court to dismiss all charges.
At trial Lee continued to insist that he had done nothing wrong. Arias, however, admitted he could no longer say MH was involved in the crime and conceded that he had “failed” at his job. The jury was out for less than an hour before returning its verdict. It took 9 years and 11 months for MH’s vindication, but justice was finally done.