Bill Wichert
NEWARK — An Essex County detective has lost
his bid to overturn a $785,000 verdict against him in a case where jurors found
he falsely arrested a Newark man for the murder of a woman in 2009.
In a Sept. 19 order, Superior Court Judge
Edith K. Payne denied the motion made by Robert Prachar, a detective with the
Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, who was seeking a judgment in his favor or a
new trial.
After a roughly three-week trial, a jury on
June 26 awarded the verdict to Edwin Williams, who had sued Prachar and other
defendants in connection with his arrest in the Feb. 8, 2009 fatal shooting of
Darsail Crooks.
Williams spent more than a year in custody at
the Essex County Correctional Facility before the charges against him were
dismissed.
The jury found that Prachar had arrested and
imprisoned Williams without probable cause, maliciously prosecuted Williams,
and intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon him.
Jurors found that co-defendant Kevin
Lassiter, a Newark detective at the time of Williams’ arrest, did not commit
those offenses against him.
The order issued by Payne indicates she
stated her reasons for denying Prachar’s motion at an earlier court hearing.
A spokesman for the state Attorney General’s
Office, which provided legal representation for Prachar, declined to comment
today on the judge’s decision.
The main argument in Williams’ lawsuit had
been that Prachar and Lassiter coerced two witnesses into identifying Williams
as the person responsible for Crooks’ murder and a previous assault.
A witness named Jean Walker identified
Williams as the man who had shot at her in January 2009 in the area where
Crooks was later shot, court documents state.
A second witness, Aisha Anderson, identified
Williams as the man driving a vehicle that Crooks entered in the hours before
she was fatally shot, court documents state.
Authorities determined the same handgun was
used in both incidents based on shell casings found at the scene, according to
Williams’ attorney, Patrick Bartels. Crooks, Walker and Anderson were all
working as prostitutes at the time of the incidents, Bartels said.
Williams was charged with murdering Crooks
and assaulting Walker, but the charges were dismissed in June 2010 because
authorities say they could not find Walker and Anderson, court documents state.
Williams spent 490 days in the Essex County jail before he was released, court
documents state.
Williams, now 50, of Newark, has an extensive
criminal history and he is currently facing drug-related charges in an
unrelated case in Essex County.
In a brief filed in support of Prachar’s
motion, his attorneys said there was no evidence of wrongdoing on his part,
claiming “the trial was devoid of any evidence from either Anderson or Walker
that Prachar attempted to influence them to identify Williams.”
But Williams’ attorneys responded in court
papers that Prachar “blatantly misrepresents the testimony presented at trial”
and said the detective coerced both women into falsely identifying Williams.
The coercion allegedly occurred on separate
occasions when each woman was shown a photo array of Williams and other
potential suspects, court documents state.
When they initially reviewed the photo array,
the women did not identify Williams, court documents state. After allegedly
being coerced, they identified Williams when they each reviewed the photo array
a second time, court documents state.
Anderson “testified multiple times at trial
that she only picked Williams’ photograph out during the second photo array
because she was told by Detectives Prachar and Lassiter to identify him,”
Williams’ attorneys wrote in court documents.
Walker claimed that when she reviewed the
photo array again, she identified Williams because a third detective “pushed
Williams’ photograph toward her and said ‘that was the guy,’” court documents
state.
Williams’ attorneys have suggested that
Prachar instructed the other detective to slide Williams’ picture toward
Walker.
The third detective “seemed to just be
following the instruction from Prachar and a jury easily could have believed
that Prachar was the mastermind between coercing the two witnesses to look at a
second array and falsely identify Williams,” Williams’ attorneys wrote in court
documents.
