In possibly the speediest settlement of a wrongful conviction suit, a Brooklyn man who served over 21 years in prison for a triple homicide he didn’t commit was awarded $3.6 million by the state, the Daily News has learned.
Anthony Yarbough, 40, was the first of 10 men who has been cleared of old murder convictions by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office so far in 2014 — and also the first to get paid.
“He won’t have to worry about money for quite a long time,” said his lawyer, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, indicating that the financial security would allow his client to take a separate federal lawsuit against the city and the NYPD all the way to trial.
Yarbough and pal Sharrif Wilson were 18 and 15 when they were charged in 1992 with stabbing Yarbough’s heroin-addled mom and his 12-year-old sister and her friend.
New evidence helped toss out the convictions in February and Yarbough filed a claim in June.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who approved the settlement this week, “is concerned about the rights of the wrongfully convicted, and the obligation the State of New York has to ensure that people who were unjustly jailed — in some cases for decades — get some justice,” said spokeswoman Melissa Grace.
“The office is working diligently to ensure that those who spent time behind bars get the justice they deserve as speedily as possible.”
The payout is in line with the $3 million received this summer by Jabbar Collins, who was railroaded into doing 15 years in prison for killing a rabbi. But Collins was exonerated in 2010.
Sources said that five months is the fastest resolution of such a case in memory.
Yarbough called 911 after returning with Wilson from a night out in the West Village and finding a bloodbath in the seedy Coney Island drug den where his mom had been threatened earlier by junkies.
Yet cops immediately zeroed in on the two teens and elicited brief confessions from them. That was the only evidence at trial.
A DNA test in 2013 showed that a sample from under the mother’s fingernails matched one from an unsolved 1999 murder of a prostitute. That, along with other evidence, convinced the DA’s office to throw out the convictions.
“They need to answer,” Margulis-Ohnuma said of past prosecutors and detectives who had handled the case, some of whom still stand by the men’s guilt. “Now, it’s time to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
He said a planned lawsuit will seek a much higher sum.
An attorney for Wilson declined to comment.
Wilson and five others are in line to get compensated after the Conviction Review Unit — that was beefed up under DA Kenneth Thompson — had cleared them this year. Three other wrongfully convicted men have died, but their relatives can potentially make a claim.
Another parolee, Derrick Hamilton, whose conviction has been reinvestigated, saw the resolution of his case delayed Friday. Sources said he’s still expected to be cleared in early 2015 or his lawyers will demand a hearing to prove his innocence of a 1991 killing.
Yarbough, meanwhile, is working a union job in a Manhattan hotel, which he will hold on to despite his new riches.
“He plans to keep doing that,” his lawyer said. “It’s gratifying.”
