A hearing has been ordered by the Appellate Division, Second Department, to determine whether prosecutors knew that a detective who took a confession from a murder suspect faced a civil suit at the same time for coercing a confession from another defendant in an unrelated case.
The panel said a Suffolk County Court judge should decide whether prosecutors at Mark Garrett’s murder trial violated their obligation under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), to inform the defense of the civil action then pending in Eastern District court against Detective Vincent O’Leary.
