Suffolk's huge unfair-conviction payouts raise concerns

Rodolfo Taylor, who steadfastly maintained his innocence, served nearly 26 years behind bars after being convicted in the 1980s for a string of Suffolk gas station robberies. In January 2022, those convictions were vacated by a judge after the Suffolk district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Bureau determined that police evidence pointing to other suspects was never turned over to Taylor's defense lawyer as required by law.

Now Taylor is getting a payback. On Dec. 14, 2023, the Suffolk County Legislature agreed to a $12.8 million settlement with Taylor to be paid by local taxpayers. Separately, Taylor also received another $1 million settlement with New York State based on the same claims.

While that payout is quite substantial the Suffolk settlement avoided an even greater financial risk — if Taylor’s $55 million federal lawsuit detailing police wrongdoing in his case had been successful. “There was no choice,” concluded Legis. Leslie Kennedy (R-Smithtown) of the county’s Ways and Means Committee after signing off on the settlement. “The evidence presented clearly put the county at fault.”

Surely the loss of life and liberty for an improperly convicted person is incalculable. “There is no amount of money that could compensate for the experience, which was more or less a hell-on-earth experience,” Taylor explained. His words echo those of Keith Bush, who received a $16 million settlement from Suffolk in 2021. Bush served 33 years in prison for a murder conviction vacated in 2019 after the Suffolk DA’s unit found that he too had been wrongly prosecuted.

Big payouts for police and prosecutorial wrongdoing may escalate in years to come. Currently, the Suffolk DA says it has 57 open cases before its Conviction Integrity Bureau, including 15 opened since District Attorney Ray Tierney, a Republican, took office. His predecessor Tim Sini, a Democrat, created the unit.

As Newsday reported last year, Long Island taxpayers overall have paid more than $165 million since 2000 stemming from lawsuits alleging law-enforcement wrongdoing. Taylor’s sum adds to that total, with other potential multimillion-dollar settlements creating further stress on the county budget.

Tierney says he’s committed to reviewing these 57 open cases “to prevent unfair convictions.”

Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine and the GOP-dominated legislature should be concerned with these huge payouts and should be asking about the overall lessons from the Taylor and Bush settlements. What systemic lessons can be learned and what improvements can be made to ensure innocent people are not wrongly accused?

The Suffolk legislature should review these cases more extensively in open hearings, rather than merely signing checks after these settlements have been negotiated in private. Testimony by the Suffolk DA’s integrity unit, defense lawyers, and community members could inform and prompt needed change. Most importantly, Romaine should select a new police commissioner who won’t tolerate wrongdoing and won’t sweep away problems by expecting that the taxpayers will always pick up the check.