American Monsters: James Leeper

0:00 Speaker 1: Warning, Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening now.

0:18 Speaker 2: True crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the strange in the darkly comic. I'm Zevan Odelberg, host of Kind of Murdery, a podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long as it's kind of Murdery. I know I am far from perfect, which is actually a bit of a useful segue today. You see, every human being has weaknesses, right, every human being sometimes succumbs to them, and every human being makes mistakes.

0:56 Speaker 2: I think that is something that all of us intuitively understand in but some of us may choose vocations, jobs that don't allow for us to lose the battle with weakness, that cannot admit the flaws in our humanity. Because if we lose the battle within ourselves, the battle to do what's right for some of us, and more to the point, for others. Because of us, the consequences may simply be too dire to be born. I bring you one such story today. It's a story entitled for a respected Prosecutor, an Unpardonable Failure.

1:29 Speaker 2: It was written by Joaquin Sapien and first published by pro Publica dot Org on June fourth, twenty fourteen. Sources are in the show notes based on the story in this article, I'm calling today's episode Leaper and Fleming, and I'm choosing to share it with you because not only are its twists and turns compelling, but I think it has much to say about compassion and consequence kind of murderies Leaper and Fleming starts now, by any acceptable standard today, it goes without saying that wrongfully incarcerated Jonathan Fleming is the rightful mythic hero, the protagonist of the story I'm about to tell.

2:19 Speaker 2: He is the man who rose unbowed from the depths of the abyss, never gave up, and proved himself righteous. And by those same measures, James Leeper is our villain. But there's another set of in air quotes heroic standards, those of ancient Greece and the Ancient Greek tragic hero. Those standards are described like so, Aristotle's tragic heroes are flawed individuals who commit without evil intent, at least initially, great wrongs or injuries that ultimately lead to their misfortune. This misfortune is often followed by a tragic realization of the true nature of events that led to the tragic hero's destiny, which means that the hero must still be at least to some degree morally grounded.

3:05 Speaker 2: And while Jonathan Fleming is unquestionably our tragic victim, it becomes again, unfortunately true by modern morals, but obviously true according to ancient Greeks, that former Brooklyn prosecutor James Leeper is the tragic hero of this story. Again, please hold the hate mail. I want to be abundantly clear. I am not saying that James Leeper is a hero. I'm saying that he is a flawed individual who committed, perhaps without evil intent, at least at some point, great wrongs and injuries that ultimately led to his own misfortune.

3:38 Speaker 2: And he certainly has been confronted with the true nature of events that led to his destiny, and he was once if he is not still, by all accounts, to some degree morally grounded, and that makes him a nearly text book Greek tragic hero. And I mean textbook, both literally and figuratively. All right, enough couching and hedging, let's get into it. On the afternoon of July eighteenth, nineteen ninety, James Leaper, a newly minted homicide prosecutor in Brooklyn, had to make a challenging closing argument.

4:06 Speaker 2: The man he'd charged with murder had mounted a substantial defense, offering plane tickets and video footage indicating he'd been vacationing at disney World when a man named Darryl Rush was shot dead in front of a Brooklyn housing project. Lieper acknowledged to the jury that this seemed like a quote perfect alibi. Nonetheless, Lieper confronted the defense straight on. Yes, the defendant, a man named Jonathan Fleming, could have been in Florida around the time of the murder, but Fleming had ample opportunity to fly back to New York kill Rush and returned to his family vacation.

4:39 Speaker 2: Lieper told the jury there were fifty three possible airline flights Fleming could have taken to do just that. Lieper's presentation won the day the jury returned a guilty verdict, Fleming twenty seven was sentenced to twenty five years to life in prison. It took twenty four years, but eventually it became clear that there had been much more to Fleming's alibi defare events, and that Leeper had failed to disclose it to the jury. The original case file from nineteen ninety contained a timestamper seat showing that Fleming had paid an Orlando Hotel phone bill just hours before Rush's murder.

5:13 Speaker 2: The file also contained a letter from the Orlando Police Department informing Brooklyn detectives that Fleming had been seen at the hotel around the time of the killing. By law, Leeper was obligated to turn that material over to Fleming's lawyer, but he had disclosed none of it, which is utterly appalling and thankfully, in April twenty fourteen, Fleming was set free, becoming at that time the latest victim of a string of wrongful convictions involving the Brooklyn District Attorney's office. But Leeper's role in the case packed a distinctive mix of shock and dismay.

5:47 Speaker 2: Interviews in twenty fourteen with an array of current and former Brooklyn prosecutors, his adversaries in the defense bar and at least one former Brooklyn judge, uniformly produced glowing testimonials to Leaper's skill, compassion, and integrity. People, even those with unflattering views of Leeper's longtime boss, former District Attorney Charles J. Hines, and the office he ran, find it close to impossible to accept the fact that Leeper knowingly hid vital evidence in a murder case. He was universally thought of as a model prosecutor, said Dan Saunders, a Queen's Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney who once worked with Leeper in the Brooklyn District Attorney's office.

6:25 Speaker 2: You'll hear that from everybody, Saunders continued. He was a trustworthy and reliable guy, the kind of guy you want to entrust with the difficult work of being a government prosecutor. I hope people say something like that about me one day. An exploration of Leaper's career as a prosecutor in Brooklyn uncovers an amalgam of genuine respect and personal troubles. Interviews with colleagues detail his quick initial rise in the office, but also a long standing struggle with alcohol. Those interviews with people who worked with Leaper show that eventually his drinking earned him a demotion in twenty twelve.

7:00 Speaker 2: In the late eighties, James Leeper was a fast rising prosecutor known for his fairness and loyalty. Decades later, his alleged misconduct in Fleming's case shocked colleagues and adversaries alike. In nineteen ninety seven, there was a case in which Leeper and the Brooklyn District Attorney's office were accused of withholding evidence that might have established the innocence of a convicted murderer. In twenty fourteen, at the time of these various revelations, Lieper, in a telephone interview, refused to comment.

7:28 Speaker 2: He did not respond to further request to discuss the Fleming case, his career, or any alleged issues with alcohol. In the early twenty tens, the reputation of prosecutors in Brooklyn had been banned. In late May twenty fourteen, the New York City Department of Investigation issued a scathing report finding that former District Attorney Hines, among other violations, received political advice from a top New York state judge and misused public money to fund his ultimately failed twenty thirteen reelection campaign in a lawsuit, He'd also been accused of having long overseen an office of rogue prosecutors where misconduct was condoned.

8:06 Speaker 2: Even encouraged Hines denied the charges. In the lawsuit, One of Hines's top lieutenants, Michael Veckioni, had been accused of railroading an innocent man on a murder charge, a claim he vehemently denied. Another senior prosecutor left the office in twenty twelve after she was accused of having withheld exculpatory evidence in a high profile rape case that soon was abandoned. By twenty fourteen, some ninety murder convictions involving the office were under review, many involving a retired police detective, and any one of which might have held additional trouble for then, current or former prosecutors.

8:40 Speaker 2: But for all the accusations and embarrassments, however, few in the New York legal world could have predicted that James Leaper would be at the center of the most appalling tumult. Until the beginning of May in twenty fourteen, Leaper still had a portfolio of cases he was prosecuting. Then on May fifth, twenty five fourteen, he was due in court to make another closing argument in a murder case. The family of twenty three year old Nikita Gribelski, a passenger in a livery cab who was shot in the head during a boxed robbery, was awaiting justice.

9:12 Speaker 2: Lieper had already laid out all the evidence against twenty one year old Michael Magnan when he was arrested the knight of the crime. Magnan had a three eighty caliber shell casing in his shoe. The casing matched the bullet lodge at Gribelski's head. A gun found near the crime scene matched both the bullet and the casing, and there was DNA found on the gun that matched the shooter. All that was left for Leeper to do was sum it all up in one final statement to the jury, but he didn't show up. He was nearly forty miles away in a hospital recovering from a damaging bout with alcohol.

9:42 Speaker 2: According to numerous colleagues, I've never heard of anything like this happening before, said Martin Goldberg, Magnum's defense attorney, who worked on New York criminal cases for more than thirty years. The Brooklyn District Attorney's office announced that Lieper had been suspended. The office did not say why and refused to answer any question about Leaper's career or his role in any possible misconduct. In the case of Jonathan Fleming, the man whose wrongful conviction destroyed James Leaper's career, Taylor Koss, Leiper's former protege in the Brooklyn DA's Office, would become the foyle whose investigation ultimately brought James Leaper down.

10:20 Speaker 2: Koss joined the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office in September two thousand and one. He was a young, ambitious lawyer, eager to realize his long held dream of becoming a top prosecutor, one that he said hearkened back to his teenage days watching Hours of Law and Order on television. James Leaper was one of cos's early bosses and mentors. At the time, Leeper was running one of the most active bureaus in the office. Prosecutors in Leaper's bureau handled nearly all criminal prosecutions in some of the most violent areas of Brooklyn, and the unit was known officially as the quote Red Zone quote.

10:54 Speaker 2: Kass said he wanted to shine there, and he saw in Leeper a man to impress and learn from. He had a red reputation for being a very strong homicide prosecutor, and it was a reputation that he earned as opposed to others who were thought of as being political appointees. Costs said of Leeper, people respected Jim for being a workhorse who earned his spot. Leeper himself had already been in the Brooklyn office for fourteen years by that time, and he, like Costs, had his heart set on being a prosecutor in his first years out of law school, so much so that he applied twice, enduring a rejection by the Brooklyn office's top brass in nineteen eighty five.

11:29 Speaker 2: According to the office's personnel records, an assistant district attorney plays two vital roles in society. Leaper wrote as part of his second successful application, The position requires one to be an advocate within the criminal justice system as well as a neutral and objective representative of all the people in the district in which he or she works. In the latter role, one has the responsibility to thoroughly investigate all leads in a case and to approach cases with a non advocacy or non adversary perspective.

11:58 Speaker 2: In that sense, one of the eighty eight his most important duties is to ensure that a defendant's constitutional rights are preserved and protected. The letter moved the District Attorney's office, then run by former US Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, to hire Leaper away from private practice. By nineteen ninety, with Hines having succeeded Holtzman, Lieper had secured a position as a homicide trial attorney and impressively advanced assignment for a young man with only three years of experience as a prosecutor.

12:24 Speaker 2: By the time KOs was christened as a fledgling prosecutor in two thousand and one, Leiper was head of the Red Zone, and everyone, according to Koss, wanted to work in the Red Zone. It had the coolest people in it, the coolest bosses, said Kaos. It was the place to be, and I got it. I got lucky. KOs reported a Leaper for more than a decade, and he, like many others who worked under Leaper, revered the man for his fairness and loyalty. Lieper stuck up for younger prosecutors when they made missteps.

12:52 Speaker 2: He took them aside to school them in the art of persuading a jury. He gave them opportunities to challenge themselves. He had implicit faith and if you earn that trust. He'd never micromanaged. Cos said he believed I could handle myself. He only came to see me do one trial. I had a cooperating witness, and he came to watch me put him on and after that he never questioned me again. I wanted him to trust me because I wanted to be in his good graces. People wanted him to think you were a good da But those who worked with Leaper came to see a troubled side of him too.

13:23 Speaker 2: In interviews, more than half a dozen lawyers who worked in the office at the time said Leaper's drinking became pronounced and as a result a problem. In twenty twelve, according to numerous people in the office, Leaper's drinking cost him his title. Personnel records show he was demoted from chief of the Red Zone back to the Homicide Bureau, but the records do not list a specific reason, and the District Attorney's office refused to comment on the cause of the demotion. For his part, Cos moved on to his own new job within the office, he became deputy Bureau chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit, a small group of assistant district attorneys and investigators tasked with reexamining old convictions that might have been flawed.

14:03 Speaker 2: In his new job, Cos soon found himself in the uncomfortable and unpopular position of reviewing cases handled by prosecutors who'd made their marks years before. He said, however, that he came to feel a sense of gratification in the work finding evidence that might lead to an innocent person's release rather than a guilty person's incarceration. Coss's first case wound up widely celebrated. Over a year long investigation, Coss and his supervisor, John O'Mara found evidence that an unemployed printer had been wrongly convicted of murdering a beloved Williamsburg rabbi in nineteen ninety.

14:37 Speaker 2: Then District Attorney Hines consented to the release of David Ranta following Cooss's investigation in March of twenty thirteen. I'm sure people resented me for it, but I didn't really care, Cos said of his unit's work. In June twenty thirteen, three months after Ranta's release, Coss left the office but he said he made a critical observation in his last year there, one that would stay with him in the co months. Murder cases, especially those tried in Brooklyn in the early bloody nineteen nineties, could be seriously flawed, and so could the prosecutors who handled them.

15:11 Speaker 2: Newly in private practice, cost came to learn of an imprisoned man named Jonathan Fleming, and shortly afterward he joined Fleming's bid for freedom. Fleming's case was pending before the conviction integrity unit. Costs once helped run and Cos realized quickly what lay ahead. He'd be challenging the work and perhaps the ethics of his one time mentor, James Leeper. Jonathan Fleming did not have an unblemished record or a reputation in Brooklyn in the late nineteen eighties, having racked up a number of convictions, including for robbery and weapons possession, but the evidence that Fleming was the man who gunned down Darryl Rush back in nineteen eighty nine, even at the time of trial, was less than overwhelming.

15:52 Speaker 2: One witness, a crack addict, had testified that she'd seen Fleming shoot Rush, but it was ultimately shown that she'd been more than four hundred feet from the scene of the shooting and had not been wearing her glasses at the time. Another witness had been so reluctant to testify that he had to be dragged to the witness stand by a court officer. As a result, Fleming had spent years after his conviction pressing for a re examination of his case. The crack addict had recanted shortly after the trial.

16:18 Speaker 2: The man who had reluctantly testified turned out to have testified under a false name. New witnesses had emerged saying that another man was the likely shooter. Fleming's efforts, however, got nowhere. Prosecutors dismissed the crackhead's recantation as well as the reliability of the new witness. Judges routinely denied his motions for a rehearing. Then, in summer of twenty thirteen, with the Brooklyn District Attorney's office under fire for a variety of alleged misconduct, Koss's former colleagues agreed to look into Fleming's claims of innocence.

16:50 Speaker 2: The ex colleagues unearthed a bombshell. The Fleming case file had been found, and its contents crippled the case against him. There was, among other evidence, the receipt that had been taken off of Fleming's person at the time of his arrest, and it showed he had paid a phone bill at his hotel in Orlando at nine to twenty seven pm on August fourteenth, nineteen eighty nine. The murder took place in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn at approximately two fifteen am. Cost recalled the moment he got the word of the discovery made by his old office.

17:22 Speaker 2: I was instantaneously nauseous, physically sick to my stomach. He said. You want to believe that these mistakes don't happen, he said, Then slowly you come to the realization that these mistakes do happen, and it results in people losing years of their lives. Cost credits the work of the conviction Integrity Unit, but the Ditrict Attorney's office said nothing about the botched case other than to consent in court to Fleming's release. Had the case file been lost, overlooked, buried in a police file, or not shared with the prosecutors.

17:52 Speaker 2: Was it intentionally withheld by leaper. James Devereaux was one of the detectives who worked on the Fleming case. At the original trial, well, Fleming's attorney had asked Devereaux several questions about the phone build receipt, including whether he recalled telling Fleming he'd make a xerox copy of it. He testified that he had no recollection of the receipt, but under questioning, conceded that it was possible that one existed, and even that he had assured Fleming he would make a copy of it, but the receipt was never injured as evidence in the case.

18:20 Speaker 2: In an interview with Pro Publica, Devereux said he didn't remember the Fleming case, but he was firm about his evidence disclosure practice at the time. I'm not in a position to try to put blame on anybody, especially when I don't recall the case, Devereux said. But when a case goes to trial, you go to the DA's office with your file and everything goes over to them. The law is certainly clear about the responsibility for gathering and disclosing evidence. Leeper was the person ultimately responsible for discovering it and turning it over.

18:48 Speaker 2: His failure to do so was unpardonable. In nineteen ninety, Jonathan Fleming was convicted of a murder that took place in Brooklyn, New York. These newly discovered documents suggested that he was in Florida at the time, supporting his original alibi. James Leeper, the prosecutor who handled the case, never shared the information. Bennett Gresham, a law professor at Pace University and a leading expert on prosecutorial misconduct, wrote a column in twenty fourteen entitled quote don't let the prosecutor off the hook unquote.

19:18 Speaker 2: In an interview, he said prosecutors will often try to deflect blame for evidence disclosure problems to the police. But said Gershman, even if we assume it was in the police file and not in the district attorney's file, and the prosecutor had no first hand knowledge of this thing. Once the defense attorney says, hey, check this out, this is a major claim of innocence, the prosecutor has the obligation to go back to the police and say, do you have this receipt, did you write a report? Did you ask the hotel if he was there?

19:47 Speaker 2: It goes to what your obligation is as a prosecutor, Gershman says, is it to bury your head in the sand, or is it to follow all possible leads to find out whether this guy is innocent? This wasn't a needle in a haystack. This was something that was right under his nose. In fact, Jonathan Fleming was not even the first time that James Leaper made this mistake, if indeed it was a mistake, and not just a man overly eager to build his reputation in the prosecutorial office of his dreams. Anne Feldman served for twenty six years as a judge in Brooklyn, but across those years she only once exercised the power to set a convicted prisoner free.

20:27 Speaker 2: The prisoner was Julio Assevedo, and the prosecutor whose failure factored into his release none other than James Leaper in nineteen eighty nine. Notably, the same year as Fleming's conviction, Judge Feldman had presided over Asceveto's initial murder trial. Aceveto had been charged with fatally shooting a man in a housing project hallway in Brooklyn. At trial, Aceavito claimed that he'd been caught up in an ugly street beef over drugs and had been forced with his own life threatened to carry out the deadly shooting.

20:57 Speaker 2: Ocevito's argument made an impression on Feldman, but ultimately failed to persuade the jury. At Ozzevito's sentencing, Feldman said she had quote no idea what the real circumstances were unquote that led him to kill I suspect. The truth lies somewhere between what you said and what the district attorney said. Feldman told Ozzivito in the court. She then sent him away for twenty years to life, but the case was back before Feldman eight years later. Something new had come to light evidence that Oscevito's account, known legally as a quote duress defense unquote, was genuine.

21:31 Speaker 2: A prosecutor in a subsequent, unrelated case had taken testimony from a man who said he was the person who had forced Oscevito to carry out the killing. The man said he had kidnapped Ozcevito and ordered him at gunpoint to fire the deadly shots. Leeper was the prosecutor who took the potentially exculpatory statement. Most damning was the fact that this new information was gained in nineteen ninety two, just three years after Ozzevito's cant but five years before his eventual release because it was never turned over to Oscevito.

22:06 Speaker 2: The man's account had surfaced on yet another unrelated Brooklyn case, and Oscevito's lawyers, when they became aware of it, eventually had it brought to the court's attention. Feldman, presented with the new information, didn't waste much time to veto pled guilty to a lesser charge, and was released. I remember feeling that this guy had told a story at his trial that was true, and just feeling very good about letting him out, Feldman said in an interview last month with Pro Publica. It remains unclear to this day just what James Leeper was thinking.

22:39 Speaker 2: The man who had confessed to forcing Ossavito to kill had also admitted to lieper a long string of violent crimes. There's no evidence that Leeper was in any way sanctioned. Feldman, in releasing Acevedo, appears to have only dealt with the new evidence and not the question of Leeper's apparent failure. Still, a spokesman for the District Attorney's office would years later acknowledged that the failure to alert Asovito to the new evidence was a mistake. The law, after all, requires that information favorable to the defense be turned over by prosecutors as soon as they discover it, even after someone has been convicted.

23:14 Speaker 2: Dan Saunders, who was a senior homicide attorney in Brooklyn at the time, declined a comment on this particular case, but in an interview he emphasized the importance of sharing such information no matter what the timing, whether a case is pending or the person has already been convicted or even served their sentence. If we get something exculpatory, there's always an obligation to investigate it and turn it over, he said. Judge Feldman said that Leeper never struck her as the kind of aggressive prosecutor so driven to win that he might break the rules to do so.

23:46 Speaker 2: It seemed to me that he was a very upfront guy. Feldman said, he was not overly zealous. I didn't feel like he was out there to kill like some of the other prosecutors. In regards to Jonathan Fleming's case. On April eighth, twenty fourteen, the proceeding before Brooklyn Judge Matthew Damick was brief, if momentous. Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Mark Hale, in consenting to Jonathan Fleming's release from prison after twenty four years, quickly laid out the rationale. The documentary evidence, and I'm talking specifically about the receipt from the Florida Hotel and the interviews with the employees at the hotel, was not available to the defense at trial.

24:23 Speaker 2: It is likely that the result would have been different, and for that reason we asked that the conviction be vacated. Dmick accepted a motion to dismiss Fleming's conviction, and pandemonium ensued in the courtroom. Reporters from every major newspaper and television channel in New York were there to record an overjoyed Fleming celebrating with his family. His story went viral. A Wall Street banker started an internet campaign that raised nearly fifty thousand dollars to help Flemming get back on his feet.

24:49 Speaker 2: Donations came in from more than six hundred people in at least fourteen different countries, but little was said about Leeper. Few news articles even mentioned his name, and he went on prosecut shooting a full load of cases. Kenneth Thompson was elected as Brooklyn's new DA in twenty thirteen. Unseating Charles Hines. As we just heard, Fleming was released in April of twenty and fourteen, and his conviction was rightfully vacated. On June fourth of twenty and fourteen, the expose that provided the backbone of this episode was published, and four days later, the new DA fired eight holdover members of the Hines regime, and James Leaper was among them.

25:33 Speaker 2: Other than a future DA candidate in New York, returning Leaper's two hundred and fifty dollars campaign donation in two thousand and fifteen, I could find essentially nothing about him or what's become of him since he was let go by the DA's office. He appears to have been extremely mildly active on LinkedIn in the last eight months, and that's as much as I could come up with as for Jonathan Fleming. After his release, he sued the City of New York for one hundred and sixty two million dollars for the twenty four years of life that he lost, which seems reasonable.

26:10 Speaker 2: He was ultimately awarded six point two million dollars, which was then tied up and unavailable to him because of a dispute between his attorneys for some amount of time. But eventually the funds were released and he used them to establish a foundation, and then he was hired by Tyler Perry to work for Tyler Perry's production company in Atlanta. And I know there's some other cool things that have happened for Jonathan Fleming as well, So at least that part of the story, if you can get over the twenty four years of incarceration, which, by the way, no one should.

26:41 Speaker 2: And it's amazing that Jonathan Fleming is able to productively channel the massive anger he must have. But if you can get over that, I suppose you could say that Fleming's story has a happy ending. As for Leaper, he should neither be excused nor forgiven. However, his battles with alcohol and subsequent hospitalization I think demonstrate that he was already at the mercy of his demons and likely a very guilty conscience, long before public disgrace drummed him from his chosen profession. I'm Zevanodleberg, and this has been kind of Murdery.

27:19 Speaker 1: If you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell your friends. You can find us on social media at Kindomurdery or email at kinomurderyat gmail dot com,