NEW YORK (AP) — For 16 years, a suburban New York prosecutor's office insisted it had the right man in a notorious 1996 double killing. The office tried him five times, through a series of hung juries and reversed convictions, before he was ultimately acquitted and freed in 2017.
On Monday, the office's current leader, Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah, said a reinvestigation identified two suspects and “no connection” to the man her predecessors tried and retried in the deaths of Archie Harris, 79, and home health aide Betty Ramcharan, 35.
The statement appears to mark the first time that the DA's office has publicly said guilt lies with anyone other than Selwyn Days, the man jurors eventually acquitted in 2017. At the time, prosecutors said that they were disappointed in the verdict.
Days' lawyer, Glenn Garber, said Monday that it's time for his client to get vindication.
“He is truly innocent, and it’s important to fully put this matter to rest,” Garber said, adding that the public also is entitled “to a fair and just closure of this heinous case.”
Rocah took office in 2021 and didn’t work in the DA’s office when it prosecuted Days. She gave no details about the two people she described as “involved" in the killings, saying the investigation was ongoing.
Her office said the developments were so recent that there was more work to be done before any potential future steps. Rocah is out of time to do that work — she leaves office this week after deciding not to run for a second term.
“It is my hope that these significant developments lead to continuing investigation and action so that justice can be achieved for the families of Mr. Harris and Ms. Ramcharan,” she said in a statement Monday.
Incoming DA Susan Cacace subsequently pledged to “continue to review cases like this double homicide.” Both she and Rocah are Democrats.
Garber said he was confident Cacace's administration would go on to “charge and punish those actually responsible” for the killings.
Harris, 79, was a recently widowed millionaire who was known around his neighborhood for bragging about keeping lots of cash at his Eastchester home — and was known to police for criminal complaints from the aides who cared for him. He was facing charges of forcing one aide — Days' mother — to perform a sex act, and pointing a gun at a second helper.
Yet he turned out to have left all but $19,000 of his estate to Ramcharan, making no provisions for his three children. Her portion ultimately went to his family, however, because Ramcharan died with him on Nov. 21, 1996.
Over five years later, authorities charged Days. He gave police a video confession that his lawyers later argued was false and coerced.
"I didn’t commit this crime. I don’t know who did. ... I don’t know nothing about it," Days told a judge in 2004.
Hung juries ended Days’ first and third trials. His second and fourth trials resulted in murder convictions and 50-year prison sentences. Both convictions were overturned.
By the time he was acquitted at his fifth trial, he'd served 16 years behind bars.
Rocah formed a Conviction Review Unit in 2021 to look into wrongful conviction claims. The unit began examining the Harris and Ramcharan case last year.
No contact information could immediately be found Monday for Ramcharan's and Harris' relatives.
FILE - Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah speaks during a news conference to announce the release of an investigative report on Robert Durst, a real estate heir and convicted murderer who died while under indictment in the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Jan. 19, 2022, in White Plains, N.Y. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
