Fourteen years after a bench trial in which he convicted a white man of fatally shooting a black man, a retired judge now says he was influenced by his views on civil rights and racism to reach the wrong verdict. His acknowledgment has teed up a post-conviction challenge some observers are calling unprecedented.
After a two-day bench trial in 1999 arising from a late-night shooting near a movie theater, now-retired Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Frank Barbaro rejected Donald Kagan’s justification defense and convicted him of second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
