Four years ago, in an upstate New York prison yard, Michael Vasquez ran into a man who had eluded him for more than a decade.
It was Alfred Charlemagne, who Vasquez had known only as “Chase” when he was arrested for robbing a drug dealer in February 1997. As the two talked in the yard at the Coxsackie Correctional Facility, Charlemagne learned that Vasquez, 59, was serving 20 years to life on a felony robbery conviction. During the conversation, Charlemagne admitted that he had committed the crime. He subsequently said so in a handwritten affidavit and also testified during Vasquez’s appeal. Based on Charlemagne’s coming forward, Vasquez was freed in December 2012.
On Monday morning, in the tenth-floor courtroom at the New York State Court of Claims in downtown Manhattan, that handwritten letter was submitted into evidence as Vasquez’s $120 million false imprisonment claim moved to its first day of trial.
“There was no way anyone could have gotten to him,” Herbert Moreira-Brown, Vasquez’s lawyer, said of Charlemagne during his opening statement. “He made himself disappear. That’s why Mr. Vasquez was wrongfully convicted and he spent 15 years in jail.”
Vasquez was convicted of stealing thousands of dollars from Janette Andriuolo and Rigo Gonzalez Jr. in a carjacking robbery that occurred during a drug deal at West 192nd Street and Broadway in January 1997. Gonzalez Jr. would not cooperate, and the prosecutors’ case hinged entirely on Andriuolo’s eyewitness identification of Vasquez as the robber, according to court records.
Before the 1997 trial started, Vasquez had enlisted his wife, Leticia Vasquez, to search for Charlemagne, according to her testimony at Monday’s trial. Leticia Vasquez drove up to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx from her home in Florida, she said. Her mission: to find a longhaired light-skinned man named “Chase” near a building identified by her husband.
“I just stayed in front of the building trying to see if I saw somebody that looked like that,” she testified. She didn’t, and Vasquez was convicted on first-degree and second-degree robbery charges in October 1997.
During Vasquez’s 2012 appeal, Charlemagne testified that he had stolen $16,000 and agreed to split some of the money with two other men involved in the drug deal.
But proving that Vasquez was wrongfully convicted is not enough, New York State Assistant Attorney General Janet Polstein said in her opening statement. To earn his client compensation for the years spent in prison, Moreira-Brown must also establish that Vasquez did not contribute to his conviction by his own conduct.
Polstein argued that Vasquez would “not be able to sustain that burden” based on his own testimony “and that of his self-interested wife,” who stands to gain a portion of any potential settlement.
In the winter of 1997, Polstein said, Vasquez traveled from Florida to stay with his childhood friend, Rigo Gonzalez Sr., who he knew was a drug dealer. He used the address to hide that he was actually living in Florida, a violation of the conditions of his parole from an earlier conviction.
Vasquez was living in the apartment when the robbery was planned, Polstein added.
“Following the crime, Mr. Vasquez bought jewelry, for which there are receipts, for his wife and himself before returning to Florida,” Polstein said.
In her testimony, Leticia Vasquez denied ever receiving jewelry from Vasquez in February 1997, before her husband was arrested. She also denied receiving any money from Vasquez when he returned from New York. In response to a question from Moreira-Brown, she said she knew Vasquez had no money, because she “paid for everything,” including his bus ticket back to Florida.
“I wouldn’t see Michael, unless he didn’t have money,” she said. “He never really contributed to anything in the house … If he ever had money, I would never see him.”
In his claim against the city, Vasquez said he suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and other ailments. The claim seeks to collect damages based upon his false arrest, false imprisonment and wrongful conviction.
Throughout the proceedings on Monday morning, Vasquez stared straight ahead without emotion. He complained multiple times of feeling ill and asked his family members for aspirin during a break.
The trial, which is being heard by Judge Faviola A. Soto, will continue on Tuesday. If Vasquez can establish the city’s liability for his false imprisonment, then the amount of damages will be decided in a second phase of the trial. Vasquez is expected to testify on his own behalf on Tuesday.