Former detective Louis Scarcella: Brooklyn, New York; White elephant case: Shawn Williams, a Brooklyn man imprisoned for more than 20 years in a fatal shooting, asked a judge on Thursday to grant him a new trial, saying that the sole eyewitness against him now says she was pressured to identify him by Scarcella, the former detective who has been accused of falsifying evidence in several other cases..."While there was no forensic evidence or motive introduced at Mr. Williams’s trial, the jury heard from Margaret Smith, a college administrator who lived across the street. Ms. Smith testified that she had seen Mr. Williams at the scene with a gun at his waist the night of the killing, even though it was dark out and she was standing 100 feet away, looking down from her sixth-story window. But in an affidavit filed along with Mr. Williams’s request for a new trial, Ms. Smith recanted that account. She said she had not seen Mr. Williams that night, but had been coerced into naming him as the killer by the former detective, Louis Scarcella. Though Mr. Scarcella was once a renowned homicide investigator, his reputation has been tainted in recent years as numerous defendants he helped send to prison have accused him of misconduct. Scores of killings that Mr. Scarcella and his onetime partner Stephen Chmil worked on are being re-examined by a special team created by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office to identify wrongful convictions, the Conviction Review Unit. Mr. Williams’s case is among those under scrutiny."

GIST: "Lawyers for a Brooklyn man imprisoned for more than 20 years in a fatal shooting asked a judge on Thursday to grant him a new trial, saying that the sole eyewitness against him now says she was pressured to identify him by a former detective who has been accused of falsifying evidence in several other cases. The imprisoned man, Shawn Williams, was convicted of murder in August 1994 in the shooting of a neighbor in the lobby of a building in the Crown Heights neighborhood. In her affidavit, Ms. Smith said she had originally identified Mr. Williams not because he was there, but because she “felt pressured to do what I believed the detectives wanted me to do.”.........Although Mr. Williams’s lawyers have had Ms. Smith’s new statement for more than two years, they delayed filing their motion for a new trial in favor of working initially with the Conviction Review Unit, hoping that its prosecutors would support their effort to reverse Mr. Williams’s conviction. So far, the prosecutors have not taken action, court papers say, despite the private investigation’s having turned up further indications of misconduct in the case. Among other things, the papers say, there are suggestions that Mr. Scarcella only cursorily considered evidence that Mr. Williams might have been in Pennsylvania when Mr. Mason was killed. Joel Cohen, one of Mr. Scarcella’s lawyers, said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. Williams’s motion for a new trial relied “principally on press reports that are factually inaccurate.” The district attorney’s office said in a statement that its review of Mr. Williams’s conviction was continuing. “Mr. Williams has waited over 20 years for justice,” said his lawyer, Victor Hou. “We filed this suit today because Mr. Williams should not be forced to wait a moment longer.”"