Talk Bronx New York

10 Years Later, a Claim the Wrong Man Was Convicted of a Bronx Killing

As the chilly evening of March 30, 1997, stretched into early morning, an ambitious young killer from the Bronx named David Prieto was walking through a sketchy neighborhood?, gun at his side, Clint Eastwood style?, believing he was on his way to taking over the lucrative drug trade on the streets near his childhood home.

“Scarface Dave,” as he was known in the Parkchester neighborhood, did not fire a shot. But within a few hours, he spread word that he had returned from prison to take what he believed was his, recruited a trusted lieutenant and collected intelligence on the area’s reigning drug organization.

But things did not turn out as he planned. His lieutenant was shot dead, and Mr. Prieto soon was imprisoned on unrelated crimes. Another neighborhood man, Michael Clancy, was sent to prison for the lieutenant’s murder, and Mr. Prieto, who had once been comfortably unrepentant, says he was dogged by guilt.

More than a decade later, in a sealed courtroom in the Bronx, Mr. Prieto unburdened himself. The man in prison for the murder had not committed the crime, Mr. Prieto said. The real killer, he said, was a man whom he taunted an hour before the shooting.

A transcript of Mr. Prieto’s testimony is among documents being filed today by Mr. Clancy?s lawyers to try to win Mr. Clancy’s release.

“An innocent man has spent 10 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, and a guilty man has gone free,” said one of those lawyers, Ronald L. Kuby.

The Bronx district attorney’s office however, which prosecuted Mr. Clancy in 2000, says Mr. Prieto’s testimony is not credible. They question why it took so long for him to come forward and argue that his story alone is insufficient to overturn Mr. Clancy’s conviction.

The prosecutors also note that two witnesses, one woman inside the pizza restaurant and another one who had been outside, identified Mr. Clancy as the killer.

“It’s important to be mindful that the so-called “new information” with which Mr. Prieto has come forward was available at the time of Michael Clancy’s trial, but Mr. Prieto refused to cooperate,” said Steven Reed, the Bronx district attorney’s spokesman.

A judge must now determine whether Mr. Prieto, 33, is a liar with an angle to play or is, as one of his lawyers, Lloyd Epstein, says, a changed man seeking a measure of personal peace. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Dec. 11.

Mr. Prieto, who has been in federal prison for crimes including murder, manufacturing narcotics and conspiracy, has said that freeing an innocent man was so important that he was testifying about the crime without the promise of witness protection or a shortened sentence.

During his testimony in September, he said the passing years had not assuaged his guilt about the death of his friend and lieutenant, John Buono, and the murder conviction of a near-stranger, Mr. Clancy.

“Well, you know, two people lost their life that night, you know, and it really hurts me,” he said.

Mr. Clancy, 33, who had no previous criminal record and has insisted he is innocent, is serving a 25-year sentence at a prison near Stormville, N.Y.

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New Refuge Islands for Bronx Pedestrians & Bus Riders

Streetsblog reader Ed Ravin sends along a photo of a new pedestrian refuge island that has recently emerged beneath an elevated subway platform in the Bronx. While the new sidewalks make bus riders’ lives a bit easier (and, perhaps, longer-lasting), Ed also has some ideas for additional improvements. He writes:

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Abusive boyfriend charged with dismembering Bronx mother of two

The family of a Bronx mom whose body parts washed up along a creek near her home two years ago say they want her longtime abusive boyfriend to pay for the brutal death of beautiful Rawayti (Nita) Haimraj.

Joshua Nowrang, 44, stands charged with second-degree murder in the beating, strangulation and dismemberment of Haimraj, the 35-year-old mother of his son and daughter.

Pretrial hearings are scheduled to begin today in Bronx Supreme Court to decide if statements he made to police will be admitted into evidence. The hearing will focus on his whereabouts the night of the July 6, 2005, murder.

“We will be at every court hearing to make sure we get justice for my little sister,” said Harry Parasram. “Our family is still in shock over her gruesome murder. He shaved her head and cut it off, along with her legs and arms. Joshua cut my sister up like a chicken.”

Defense attorney Michael Leavitt said his client doesn’t know what happened to his longtime girlfriend, whom he met in their native Guyana two decades ago.

The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Dan McCarthy, declined comment.

But the prosecution is expected to charge that Nowtang killed Haimraj and disposed of her body in Pugsley Creek near their Castle Hill home. According to published reports and Haimraj’s relatives, she was a victim of domestic violence.

“We kept telling her to leave,” said Parasram. “He was a bully and nobody liked him, but Nita didn’t want us to get involved.”

But when Haimraj didn’t answer her phone on July 6, 2005, her eight siblings went to her home. Nowtang told police that Haimraj wasn’t there when he returned from fishing in Pugsley Creek. When the siblings heard about it, they ran to the creek.

“Nothing could have prepared my sisters for what they found down there,” said Parasram. “They screamed and screamed when they found her head first and all her beautiful hair had been shaven off. Then they found her arms and her foot.

“One of my sisters was with Nita when she got a manicure and pedicure for the Fourth of July and she recognized the polish,” he said. “That’s how we knew it was really her.”

Other body parts washed up in Queens. The city medical examiner said the cause of death was neck compression and blunt impact injuries.

“My sister died a terrible death,” said Parasram. “I want him to pay for what he did to my sister. Nobody deserves this. Her children don’t have their mother and our family is still grieving.”

?SOURCE: NY Daily News

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More schools adopting ASL as a foreign language

The classroom at Bronx Leadership Academy II was silent as Arsenio Merced, 17, stood in the front of the room and told a story. When he finished, his fellow students, instead of clapping, held up their hands and shook them around.

Merced, a junior, is taking American Sign Language at this public school in the South Bronx section of New York City. Starting this academic year, students at Bronx Leadership can select American Sign Language to fulfill their language requirement instead of more traditional spoken languages.

“Most of the students are here because they had trouble in other languages,” said David Buie, 29, the school’s sign language instructor. “They seem to be doing a lot better here than they did in Spanish or French.”

For the past two years, Buie has been teaching ASL as an elective, or what the school calls a club, at Bronx Leadership. Students who join the club learn basic vocabulary, and Buie teaches them a popular song of their choosing. Last year the students learned “Irreplaceable” by Beyonce, performing the song for the whole school at the end of the semester.

But this year, the school approached Buie, who has been studying ASL since 2005, to redesign the class from a club that meets once a week to a formal language course that counts toward graduation.

Merced decided to take the class not because he was having trouble in other languages, but because his aunt is deaf, and both her children are fluent in sign language.

“I wanted to learn it so I can talk to my aunt,” he said. “And by luck, I can teach it to some of my cousins.”

Merced said, with a deaf member of his family, he had always wanted to learn ASL but didn’t know where to take lessons. His aunt had a book, but it wasn’t enough to teach him.

“When I heard I could take it here, I was really interested,” he said. “I wanted to learn more.”

Bronx Leadership Academy II is one of a rapidly growing number of high schools across America that are using ASL as a foreign-language requirement. In 2000, according to a survey of state education departments by Teachers College at Columbia University, there were 456 high schools that taught ASL, not including high schools targeted toward deaf students. By 2004, the number had jumped to 701.

Steve Ackley, director of communications for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, in Alexandria, Va., said this sudden rise helped bring about his organization’s recent recognition of ASL as an official foreign language.

The council never deliberately left ASL teachers out, he said. “But there was a growing interest, a growing number of people in the ASL community that asked us to support it.”

Ackley said there was no opposition he could recall from inside or outside of his organization when it adopted the stance that sign language is a foreign language.

The council believes that ASL teachers are a legitimate part of the foreign-language community, he said, “and since we are the umbrella organization for all languages at all levels, it was a natural progression for them to become part of that.”

Geoffrey Poor, associate professor in the department of sign language and interpreting services at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, N.Y., said in an e-mail that in the linguistics community, the issue of ASL as a foreign language was “laid to rest” with the publication of A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles in 1965 by William Stokoe, a sign language teacher at what is now Gallaudet University, the world-renowned university for the deaf in Washington. But in popular culture, he said, those who accept ASL as a foreign language are harder to come by.

“For a long time people figured, out of ignorance, that it was just miming, broken English, etc.,” he said about ASL. “However, there is no deaf cuisine or clothing or country,” which, Poor believes, is why “many people have resisted giving it a foreign-language status.”

Resistance to ASL seems to be waning. As of 2006, 41 states had approved of adding ASL to the foreign-language curriculum, with Nebraska being the most recent addition.

“A group of hard-of-hearing and not-hard-of-hearing people wanted to encourage more people to go into sign language,” said Jim Scheer, member of the Nebraska State Board of Education. He said the group wanted to encourage people to not only work in the deaf community, but also gain a skill that would give them a competitive edge in other professional fields, such as medicine and social work.

“The only problem we encountered was to teach the course, you need to be a certified teacher,” Scheer said.

Scheer explained that a teacher needs a college degree or an official endorsement, and there is only one college in the state, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, that teaches ASL. Right now, he said, only two high schools offer courses in ASL, but the hope is that since state approval, certified teachers from outside Nebraska will be attracted to the state.

“It’s like the chicken and the egg,” he said. “No teachers are currently certified, but we might give people interested in ASL an opportunity to get a degree and come back to teach.”

At Bronx Leadership Academy II, outside of Buie’s classroom, all the students have posted their names on a bulletin board with the various hand signs spelling out each one. Inside, they go over vocabulary words for an upcoming quiz. Merced eagerly shouts the words as Buie signs them out.

“This means a lot to me right now,” Merced said. “This is the reason I am doing this. Sometimes it will be hard, but I will take the chance.”

SOURCE: Rutland Herald

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