He spent decades in prison. How the botched murder case was uncovered

Harry Ruiz should never have been convicted.

That's the conclusion a New York judge reached April 27, leading him to toss the botched murder conviction. Ruiz knows he'll never get back the 25 years he spent in prison for a murder he has always maintained he did not commit. But he said that day in court lifted a huge weight off his shoulders.

"I felt overwhelmed. I felt relieved. I felt like I can breathe," he told USA TODAY.

Ruiz said the hearing also shed new light on evidence that could have helped his case. A reinvestigation by a special unit of the district attorney’s office uncovered that prosecutors paid the sole teenage eyewitness and her mother thousands and were told by two other witnesses after the conviction that Ruiz was not part of the 1993 murder-for-hire plot.

Previous prosecutors failed to disclose those payments or the witness accounts, Ruiz’s attorney Ron Kuby said. The New York County District Attorney’s Office said it has “no basis to dispute” Kuby’s claims, but couldn’t confirm them either in part because the attorney who prosecuted Ruiz refused to participate in the reinvestigation.

“To this court, that speaks volumes,” Judge Robert Mandelbaum wrote.

Kuby called the case an example of "serious, egregious, persistent, continuing prosecutorial misconduct," a problem legal experts say has been linked to hundreds of wrongful convictions nationwide.

Though people who have been wrongfully convicted are typically able to secure cash settlements as some measure of justice, it's rare for the attorneys who helped put them behind bars to face consequences. Prosecutors have immunity from civil lawsuits − a protection some say they need to do their jobs without fear.

When asked whether anyone would be held accountable for prosecuting Ruiz, District Attorney Alvin Bragg said, "the judge’s decision and our papers kind of stand for themselves.”

“We’re focused on, much more prospectively, any lessons that can be drawn here going forward, rather than retrospectively,” Bragg told USA TODAY.

What happened to Harry Ruiz?

Days after Emmanuel Felix was murdered in 1993, Ruiz was pegged as the shooter by a 13-year-old neighbor, according to court documents. Though her testimony was repeatedly inconsistent, other witnesses corroborated Ruiz's alibi and there was no physical evidence linking Ruiz to the crime, he was convicted and given the maximum sentence.

"I didn't deserve that," he said. "They took my youth away. They took my life. I could have died every day."

Ruiz fought his conviction. As motion after motion was denied, he said he fell into a depression but never gave up hope.

Though he was released on parole in 2019, he said he still didn't feel free. Ruiz said he rarely went anywhere other than work, secluding himself out of fear of getting caught up in another case of mistaken identity.

"Coming home, I still felt a disconnect," he said. "I didn't know how to be a father or a husband or a son or a brother."

What Ruiz didn't know was that over the course of 15 years leading up to and following his trial, prosecutors provided the alleged eyewitness and her mother with more than $17,000 “cash, apartments and legal assistance,” court documents say.

It was information that his attorney likely could have used to undermine her testimony. The Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors are required to disclose all significant, favorable information in their possession to defendants, what's known as the Brady rule.

But the trial prosecutor, identified by Kuby as former assistant district attorney Helen Sturm, never shared this information with the defense, according to Kuby. The trial prosecutor “declined to voluntarily discuss this case" during the reinvestigation, the district attorney’s office wrote.

Then, in 2002, a “major narcotics trafficker” informed former assistant district attorney John Dormin that he had hired someone to kill Felix, an account separately corroborated by another member of the same drug organization, court documents say. Again, Kuby said, prosecutors never told Ruiz’s attorney at the time about this critical evidence until after the reinvestigation was launched in 2024.

The assistant district attorney assigned to the case recalled speaking with Ruiz's defense attorney around that time, but prosecutors "have no records indicating what was or was not" disclosed.

Dormin did not respond to requests for comment from USA TODAY. Sturm declined to comment on any of her old cases, saying she doesn't have "a sufficient memory" to discuss them without reviewing the related documents.

"I have read the articles and suffice it to say that numerous statements contained in the articles concerning the Ruiz case are not consistent with my memory," she said in a text message to USA TODAY. Sturm declined to specify which articles or statements she was referring to.

Prosecutorial misconduct linked to hundreds of wrongful convictions

What Sturm and Dormin have been accused of by Ruiz's attorney − withholding evidence − is the most common form of prosecutorial misconduct, according to Samuel Gross, co-founder of the National Registry of Exonerations. Misconduct by prosecutors has played a role in more than 30% of wrongful conviction cases, the Registry reported in 2020, though Gross said the rates are likely even higher.

"It's deliberately concealed and often successfully," Gross said. "So there are absolutely, certainly cases in which we didn't know about misconduct but in which it occurred and contributed to wrongful convictions."

Unearthing this kind of misconduct often takes enormous effort. Ruiz’s conviction was vacated after an extensive reinvestigation, sparked by a tip from a cold case detective. It involved interviewing dozens of witnesses and reviewing thousands of documents to corroborate these claims, according to Shalena Howard, head of the Post-Conviction Justice Unit.

"It's always challenging," Howard said.

The case against Ruiz bears some similarities to and shares a key player with another wrongful conviction from that era, one that was uncovered after a similar effort. In November 2023, Jabar Walker was exonerated of a 1995 double murder following a reinvestigation by the district attorney’s office and the Innocence Project.

The inquiry found “numerous problems,” according to the Innocence Project, including that prosecutors had failed to disclose that one key witness had told investigators Walker was not the gunman and another who did identify Walker as the gunman was given housing benefits. Sturm explicitly told jurors that the latter witness had received “no consideration in connection with her testimony,” the Innocence Project said.

"This is the type of thing we routinely would disclose now," Bragg said.

Even ‘repeat offenders’ rarely face discipline

Although “a good number of prosecutors are repeat offenders,” they still rarely get disciplined, said Bennett Gershman, a law professor at Pace University and legal ethics expert.

Just 4% of the prosecutors involved in wrongful conviction cases have faced some kind of discipline, according to the Registry. Only two prosecutors were charged with crimes related to high-profile misconduct cases, and both received minimal sentences.

“If you’re not going to go after prosecutors who are presently prosecutors – and many present prosecutors are notorious offenders – I think it’s very unlikely that they’re going to go after prosecutors who have long since retired,” Gershman said.

A New York state commission launched in 2021 to investigate this kind of misconduct – modeled after a similar commission for judges created in the 1970s − has received nearly 500 complaints. So far, it has only finished investigating and recommended consequences in one case.

Kuby, who has practiced law in New York for more than 40 years, could recall only one prosecutor in the state who has faced severe consequences for withholding evidence. He's skeptical of the new commission’s ability to change this, but others are more optimistic.

“The commission is finally gearing up and is going to be moving at full speed very shortly,” said Bill Bastuk, who has advocated to expand the practice into other states, including California and Illinois.

Wrongful conviction lawsuits seek justice, but prosecutors are shielded

Wrongfully convicted people sometimes seek justice in the form of compensation through lawsuits against the jurisdictions that put them behind bars. New York alone has paid out more than $1 billion to the hundreds of people exonerated of crimes there, the Registry reported in March.

Prosecutors have immunity from civil lawsuits linked to their official duties, according to Timothy J. Cruz, President of the National District Attorneys Association.

"It basically ensures that we as prosecutors can carry out our duties independently," Cruz said. "Because often in our role, we make difficult and many times unpopular decisions, and I think you have to be able to do that without worry about being personally sued for doing your job."

But those protections don't mean prosecutors can escape accountability, said Cruz, the longtime district attorney for Plymouth County, Massachusetts. If misconduct is uncovered, he said, district attorneys' offices should be empowered to go through old cases to determine if it was part of a pattern.

"I just think that we have that responsibility," he said.

Civil lawsuits can also provide some “admittedly limited accountability” for bad actors, Kuby said.

“It’s only money in a civil case, but it also provides us with an opportunity to force people responsible for this to answer questions under oath,” he said.

Kuby said he hasn’t yet discussed the potential for a lawsuit with Ruiz. Ruiz said he is focused on moving forward. He's excited for the birth of his second grandchild. Meanwhile, Ruiz said, he is living with mental health issues stemming from his incarceration.

He said the people who wrongfully prosecuted him should be punished in some way but "that was never gonna happen." Through his faith, he's found a way to forgive.

"What would Jesus do? In other words, would he forgive those who prosecute him?" he said. "Yes."