Manhattan judge tosses hundreds of convictions tied to NYPD officers accused of misconduct

A Manhattan judge has agreed to throw out more than 300 criminal convictions that relied on the work of nine former NYPD officers found guilty of accepting bribes, planting drugs on people and other crimes.

Judge Kevin McGrath acted at the request of the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is investigating 1,100 cases tied to officers whose police work has come into question following their own criminal convictions. The office moved last fall to overturn 188 convictions that the officers helped to secure.

“We cannot stand by convictions that are built on cases brought by members of law enforcement who have violated the law,” DA Alvin Bragg said in a statement. “These cases represent hundreds of New Yorkers who have been living with the serious costs that come with a conviction, including barriers to employment, housing and education.”

The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In all, McGrath vacated 306 misdemeanor convictions Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court. He is expected to overturn two additional misdemeanors and eight felony convictions on Wednesday.

The DA’s office said the former NYPD officers whose cases were thrown out include:

• Jason Arbeeny (24 cases), who was sentenced to five years’ probation and 300 hours of community service for planting drugs on two people
• Johnny Diaz (129 cases), who was sentenced to six years in prison for helping to transport drugs and also accepting bribes and gifts from an undercover officer who pretended to be a drug dealer
• Michael Arenella (21 cases), who was sentenced to 160 hours of community service for taking money from an undercover officer and using the money to pay an informant
• Michael Carsey (26 cases), who was sentenced to 36 days of community service for lying under oath
• Nicholas Minas (12 cases), who was sentenced to 15-and-a-half years in prison for stealing and selling guns from a police precinct
• Richard Hall (27 cases), who was sentenced to five years’ probation for releasing an 18-year-old woman from custody in exchange for sexual favors
• William Eiseman (56 cases), who was sentenced to five years’ probation and three months in jail for giving false testimony and conducting illegal searches
• Michael Foder (two cases), who was sentenced to three months in jail for lying under oath in federal court
• Oscar Sandino (19 cases), who was sentenced to two years in prison and one year of supervised release for coerced sexual misconduct against two women in custody

Hall’s lawyer, Peter Guadagnino, declined to comment. Attempts to reach the other former officers or their attorneys were not successful.

The Manhattan DA’s Post-Conviction Justice Unit, which was launched under Bragg’s leadership, started to review the cases after public defenders and advocacy groups shared a list with prosecutors of 22 former NYPD officers convicted of crimes.

The latest batch of dropped convictions spans more than two decades, from 1996 to 2017. The Manhattan DA’s office said about 93% of those convicted were Black or Latino.

About 60 of the convictions led to someone’s imprisonment, while more than 130 of the cases resulted in fines, according to the DA’s office. The people whose convictions are being vacated are not considered exonerated. Rather, the action is an admission by prosecutors that investigating officers’ records cast too much doubt on the convictions to uphold them.

Public defenders said those in law enforcement who are charged with crimes should face the same scrutiny as their clients.

“While we hope that this moment delivers some justice and closure to the New Yorkers impacted by these tactics, the sad reality is that many were forced to suffer incarceration, hefty legal fees, loss of employment, housing instability, severed access to critical benefits and other collateral consequences,” said Elizabeth Felber, supervising attorney of the Legal Aid Society’s Wrongful Conviction Unit. Felber also urged Bragg and other prosecutors to continue to review convictions “on a rolling basis with full transparency.”

District attorneys across the city have moved to vacate hundreds of convictions in recent years as new information has come to light about the NYPD members who investigated those cases. The 2020 repeal of 50-a — a state law that shielded law enforcement’s records — has also made it easier in recent years to learn about officer misconduct.

Prosecutors in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan have asked judges to toss more than 450 cases connected to one former detective, Joseph Franco, who was charged with perjury and official misconduct on claims that he lied to bolster investigations when he worked in the Narcotics Borough Manhattan South.

A judge dropped the charges against Franco earlier this year after the prosecutor overseeing the case admitted to withholding evidence, leading to her removal from her post. Franco’s defense attorney denied that his client had intentionally lied.