That is how Supreme Court Justice Joseph A. Zayas characterized the conduct of two prosecutors in the Queens District Attorney’s Office who he found responsible for engineering the wrongful convictions of three men for a double murder in East Elmhurst Queens 25 years ago. In his 29-page decision filed last week, Judge Zayas meticulously documented how the two prosecutors, Charles Testagrossa, then Chief of the Major Crimes Bureau and Brad Leventhal, currently Chief of the Homicide Bureau, abdicated their constitutional and ethical duties and denied the defendants a fair trial. To critics, Judge Zayas’s decision illuminates a longstanding culture in the Queens D.A.’s office that places winning convictions ahead of doing justice.

The murders occurred in the pre-dawn hours shortly before Christmas, 1996, when several men in a van attempted to rob a check-cashing establishment and shot and killed Charles Davis, an off-duty police officer, and Ira Epstein, owner of the store. The killings inflamed the community, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir demanded quick arrests. Soon after the killings, the police received a tip from a small-time drug dealer, John Mark Bigweh, who over several days of police questioning gave evolving and contradictory accounts about the killings, first claiming that he knew nothing about it and then saying he was the lookout. He identified George Bell, Rohan Bolt, and Gary Johnson as the perpetrators, Bell being the shooter.