New York City to Pay $3.5 Million to Wrongfully Imprisoned Queens Man

City to Pay $3.5 Million to Wrongfully Imprisoned Queens Man



By COREY KILGANNON
Published: October 17, 2008

In one of the largest wrongful-conviction payouts in state history, New York City has agreed to pay $3.5 million to a Queens man imprisoned for 12 years after being found guilty of attempted murder.

The man, Shih-Wei Su, was convicted by a jury in 1992 after Queens prosecutors knowingly presented false testimony from the star witness, according to a ruling in 2003 by the United States Court of Appeals, which overturned Mr. Su’s conviction and condemned the Queens district attorney’s office.

But even after the settlement was finalized in federal court on Thursday, Mr. Su said he was still angry.

“The settlement doesn’t buy back the time I lost and doesn’t do real justice, but the amount shows the public something is very wrong here,” said Mr. Su, now 35 and a financial consultant in Manhattan. “I did 12 years on a wrongful conviction, and no one was punished for it.”

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the city’s corporation counsel called the settlement “in the best interest of all parties.”

Joel B. Rudin, Mr. Su’s lawyer, said that his research showed that about 80 Queens convictions over a 15-year period ending in 2003 had been reversed because of prosecutorial wrongdoing, but that those prosecutors had never been disciplined.
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