Somebody’s Lying, But Who?
Simple Justice: The New York Times reports a truly bizarre tale in the case of Kareem Bellamy, who was released by Judge Joel Blumenfeld in Queens Supreme after a tape of another man confessing to the murder for which Bellamy convicted set him free. The problem is that the tape is a fraud, as everyone now concedes.
Roughly four months ago, a judge vacated Mr. Bellamy’s conviction after the defense produced an audiotape in which another man confessed to the crime. In mid-August, the judge, Justice Joel L. Blumenfeld, released Mr. Bellamy on bail, pending a new trial.
But the informant who supplied the tape has since told the authorities that he staged the recording to “create this false evidence because I was paid thousands of dollars by the attorneys for Kareem Bellamy.” Mr. Bellamy’s lawyers acknowledged in court on Friday that the tape was fraudulent, but said they did not know it was fake when they received it.
Bellamy’s lawyer, Thomas Hoffman, together with a team from Cravath, Swaine & Moore, deny that they paid anyone to fabricate a tape. But Hoffman explains that they didn’t even know about the existence of Michael Green, who claims his friend, Levon Melvin, supposedly confessed to the murder, until Green came to them.
In an interview after the hearing, Mr. Hoffman denied that he paid Mr. Green to create the tape. In fact, Mr. Hoffman said, the defense team did not know who Mr. Green was until he went to one of Mr. Hoffman’s private investigators and said that a friend, Mr. Melvin, confessed to the murder.
The prosecution never verified the tape when it first came to light because Melvin was the a suspect in a murder.
Prosecutors have always been skeptical of the tape, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office said. They did not…