A lawyer suing the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office on behalf of an innocent man who did sixteen years in prison accused D.A. Charles “Joe” Hynes of running “a private jail system where witnesses were illegally interrogated and forcibly detained indefinitely,” in hotel rooms. Jabbar Collins has said illegally obtained testimony helped put him away for a murder he didn’t commit. His lawyer, Joel Rudin, says D.A. investigators would illegally hold witnesses in hotels so they couldn’t flee.
But the testimony of one former D.A. investigator alleges even more stunning treatment of reluctant witnesses: ” … Once they’re handcuffed, they’re in their underwear and you speak to them a little bit more, ‘Are you going to fight us? You like pants?’ You know, if that’s the case, if they’re compliant, we dress them and give them water, whatever they need so they would be comfortable.” Hynes’s office called Rudin’s accusations “irresponsible and absurd,” and said, “Our court papers fully address the legal issues.” Dealing with them might make great television though.
