Controversial detective Scarcella has case retried in Brooklyn
In the bloody years when killings peaked in New York City, Detective Louis Scarcella built a reputation for closing cases.
A second-generation cop who smoked cigars, ran marathons, worked a side job at a Coney Island amusement park and jokingly put “adventurer” on his business card, the now-retired sleuth has been frank about lying to suspects, even praying with them, to elicit information. In the 1980s and ’90s, he got confession after confession. Prosecutors got conviction after conviction.
But in the past nine years, nearly 20 murder and other convictions have been tossed out after defendants accused Scarcella of coercing or inducing false confessions and bogus witness identifications, which he denies. The same prosecutor’s office that won those convictions ended up repudiating most of them.