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Wrongly Convicted Database Record
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Charge: |
Attempted Rape and Assault |
Sentence: |
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Years Imprisoned: |
4 |
Year Crime: |
1964 |
Year Convicted: |
1967 |
Year Cleared: |
1973 |
U.S. State or Country of Crime: |
New York |
County or Region of Crime: |
Kings |
City of Crime: |
New York City |
Result: |
Judicially Exonerated Released |
Summary of Case: |
"George Whitmore Jr. was wrongly convicted on November 18, 1964 of the attempted rape and assault of 20-year-old Elba Borrero in Kings County (Brooklyn), New York on April 23, 1964. Whitmore's prosecution was based on his identification by the victim after she had seen him prior to selecting him from a lineup, and his 61-page confession on April 24, 1964, after 22 hours of questioning without a lawyer, that he recanted as coerced by being beaten by the police, and that he was coerced to sign the statement without knowing what it was. Whitmore also confessed on April 24 to three murders in two separate cases: the murder of two young women, Janice Wylie, 21, and Emily Hoffert, 23, in their Manhattan apartment in August 1963 that the press dubbed the "Career Girl Murders," and the rape and murder of Minnie Edmonds, a young woman, in Brooklyn in April 1964. However, Whitmore recanted his confessions as coerced by the police. After Whitmore was convicted by a jury of attempted rape, on March 19, 1965 Supreme Court Judge David L. Malbin Jr. granted his pre-sentencing motion for a new trial based on his right to due process was denied because jurors were found to have been exposed to the extraneous evidence of newspaper accounts that described Whitmore as a "prime suspect" in the Career Girl Murders. The prosecutor also admitted that an FBI report wasn't disclosed to Whitmore that the threads on his coat didn't match the threads on a button believed to have been torn from the assailant's coat. Whitmore was retried and again convicted, in March 1966, of the attempted rape of Borrero. On April 10, 1967 the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court reversed Whitmore's conviction on the basis the trial judge improperly refused to allow Whitmore's lawyer to cross-examine the police officers who interrogated Whitmore about all of his purported statements to the police regarding the Borerro case, the Edmonds case, and the Wylie-Hoffert case. The appeals court ruled it was for the jury to decide if Whitmore's statements were coerced or voluntary -- not the trial judge. Whitmore as tried a third time -- but during that trial there was no testimony about any of his confessions. The prosecution's case was based on his identification by the victim that Whitmore argued was tainted by her having seen him prior to the lineup in which he was identified, and that he didn't resemble her assailant she described to officers immediately after the crime. In 1967 Whitemore was tried and convicted by a jury for a third time. After his conviction was affirmed by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court in July 1970, Whitmore's conviction was reviewed by the New York Court Appeals, which on April 21 affirmed his convictions by a 4 to 3 vote -- with Judge Brreitel writing a lengthy dissent. Lawyers for Whitmore were able to locate "Borrero's sister-in-law Celeste Viruet in Puerto Rico and returned with an affidavit stating that Borrero's courtroom testimony was contradicted by what she told her family shortly after the attack. Viruet had seen the attacker from her window, but police had never asked her to look at Whitmore. Borrero also had identified a different man in a "mug shot" notebook before police had shown her Whitmore." (www.encyclopedia.com) Based on the new evidence, Whitmore's petition for a new trial was granted, a motion by the Kings County DA to dismiss his indictment was granted on April 10, 1973, and Whitmore was released from custody, after spending about four years in prison during the nine years his case went through its many legal stages before his exoneration.. In April 1965 Whitmore went on trial for the murder of Edmonds, but a mistrial was declared. The only evidence against Whitmore in the Edmonds case was his confession. He was not retried and his indictment was dismissed in 1966 after the US Supreme Court's ruling Mirada v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966) cited his case as an example of a false confession being obtained by modern interrogation methods. In January 1965, 22-year-old drug addict Richard Robles was charged with committing the Wylie-Hoffert murders. Robles was later convicted of the murders and on January 12, 1966 he was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison (as of July 2017 he remains imprisoned.). Although 12 alibi witnesses supported Whitmore's alibi defense that on the day of the Wylie-Hoffert murders he was at his home in Wildwood, New Jersey, 160 miles from Manhattan where she was killed, the charges were not dismissed against him until after Robles was convicted for the crime. After all the charges were dismissed, Whitmore filed a $10 million claim against the State of New York for compensation that named as defendants agents, servants, officers, and employees of the New York County and the Kings County District Attorney's Offices, and the New York Police Department and employees. The New York Court of Claims ruled that it lacked jurisdiction because everyone who Whitmore alleged committed wrongdoing was employed by county and city governments -- not New York State. On December 16, 1976 the the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Claims ruling dismissing Whitmore's lawsuit. Whitmore's appeal brief stated that he: "was imprisoned for approximately four years and otherwise continuously restrained and detained while being forced to undergo four public trials, two public hearings and extensive legal proceedings, appeals, writs and applications which were the direct result of the wrongful and fraudulent actions of various members of the Police Department and District Attorneys' Offices in Kings and New York Counties." After the suit was dismissed, Whitmore told reporters: "They wrecked my life, and they still won't admit they did anything wrong." Whitmore received no compensation for his approximately four years of wrongful imprisonment. In its seminal ruling in Mirada v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966) on June 13, 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court referred to Whitmore's cases in Footnote 24: " Interrogation procedures may even give rise to a false confession. The most recent conspicuous example occurred in New York, in 1964, when a Negro of limited intelligence confessed to two brutal murders and a rape which he had not committed. When this was discovered, the prosecutor was reported as saying: "Call it what you want—brain-washing, hypnosis, fright. They made him give an untrue confession. The only thing I don't believe is that Whitmore was beaten." N. Y. Times, Jan. 28, 1965, p. 1, col. 5."" |
Conviction Caused By: |
Perjury by the victim and false confession coerced by police. |
Innocence Proved By: |
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Defendant Aided By: |
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Compensation Awarded: |
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Was Perpetrator Identified? |
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Age When Imprisoned: |
19 |
Age When Released: |
28 |
Sex: |
Male |
Skin/Ethnicity: |
Black |
Information Source 1: |
"George Whitmore Jr., Who Falsely Confessed to 3 Murders in 1964, Dies at 68, Paul Vitello, The New York Times, October 15, 2012" |
Information Location 1: |
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/nyregion/george-whitmore-jr-68-dies-falsely-confessed-to-3-murders-in-1964.html |
Information Source 2: |
"People v. Whitmore, 45 Misc. 2d 506 (NY Supreme Court, Kings County, 3-19-1965) (Trial judge set aside conviction based on jury misconduct of reading newspaper accounts describing Whitmore as a suspect in the "Career Girl Murders.")" |
Information Location 2: |
"https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3210614714237579231&q=George+Whitmore&hl=en&as_sdt=6,48" |
Information Source 3: |
"Whitmore v. State, 55 AD 2d 745 (NY Appellate Div., 3rd Dept. 12-16-1976) (Affirming Court of Claims dismissal of Whitmore's lawsuit based on lack of jurisdiction.)" |
Information Location 3: |
"https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=7380576840892947330&q=George+Whitmore&hl=en&as_sdt=6,48" |
Information Source 4: |
"The Whitmore Confessions and Richard Robles Trial: 1965, By Staff, www.encyclopedia.com" |
Information Location 4: |
http://www.encyclopedia.com/law/law-magazines/whitmore-confessions-and-richard-robles-trial-1965 |
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Innocents Database Created and Maintained by Hans Sherrer innocents@forejustice.org