The New York State Court of Appeals agreed Tuesday to review whether convicted sex offender Jesse Friedman has the right to access his entire case file while trying to prove his innocence decades after pleading guilty.
The decision comes almost four months after a Brooklyn appellate court’s ruling that the Nassau County District Attorney’s office was not required to give the former Great Neck resident “every piece of paper” in his criminal file except for the victim’s names.
“The court’s decision to hear Friedman’s appeal is a major step in the direction of transparency and open government,” Friedman’s attorney Ronald Kuby said in a statement. “The Nassau County DA’s office has long resisted the winds of change, preferring stuffy rooms to fresh air, secrecy to openness. They will now have their chance to make that case to the state’s highest court. We are confident that open government will prevail.”
The appellate court panel reversed a 2013 Nassau County judge’s decision that Friedman could have the files in his criminal case.
That ruling followed a three-year investigation by former DA Kathleen Rice’s office after the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in 2010 that there may be evidence suggesting Friedman may have been wrongfully convicted.
Rice, who resigned as DA in January after being elected to Congress last November, said at the time her office’s investigation confirmed Friedman’s original conviction, which took place under another DA.
“Instances of wrongful conviction are real and exist in far greater numbers than any of us would like to admit. Wrongful convictions undermine public safety, and they pose the greatest threat there is to the integrity required of our justice system. But the case against Jesse Friedman is not one of them,” Rice said. “I came to this case without an agenda or any personal stake in its outcome, and without any interest outside of searching for the truth. We were fully prepared to exonerate Mr. Friedman if that’s where the facts led us. But the facts, under any objective analysis, led to a substantially different conclusion. This exhaustive and impartial process has only strengthened the justice system’s confidence that Jesse Friedman was involved in the sexual abuse of children.”
Friedman, now 46 and living in Connecticut, pleaded guilty in 1988 with his father, Arnold, to abusing 13 boys who were taking computer classes in the basement of their Great Neck home.
After spending 13 years in prison, he was released on parole in 2001 and soon retracted his guilty plea, saying his confession was coerced by law enforcement officials and police who manipulated false abuse claims from the alleged victims.
“I am very pleased with the decision of the Court of Appeals to review Nassau Supreme Court Judge [F. Dana] Winslow’s order that the complete Friedman file be opened,” Friedman said. “Judge Winlsow, the only person apart from the DA to review the files, concluded that there was exculpatory evidence withheld, that none of the witness statements were written by the children themselves, and that those statements had glaring discrepancies.”
In 1995, his father committed suicide in prison.
Friedman’s claims of innocence were chronicled in the Academy Award-nominated documentary “Capturing the Friedmans,” directed by Andrew Jarecki in 2003.
Nassau County prosecutors agreed in September 2014 to hold an innocence hearing, but there is no timetable for the hearing.
The case’s next court date is May 10.
Efforts to reach the DA’s office for comment were unavailing.
