After spending some 23 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit, David Ranta walked out of a Brooklyn courtroom a free man yesterday after prosecutors conceded the evidence against him had "degraded" to the point that they could not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Ranta was convicted in 1991 for the high-profile shooting death of a prominent ultra-Orthodox religious leader, Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger. But a fresh look at the case by the Brooklyn district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit disclosed that a man who had once identified Ranta as the killer now felt "discomfort" about his testimony and others admitted they had fabricated statements fingering Ranta (NYLJ, March 21).
