The Evidence Was There All Along: How a Hidden Hotel Receipt Cost an Innocent Man Nearly 25 Years of Freedom

The Weekly Press | Criminal Justice

SPECIAL REPORT • WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS

By Derek Payne | The Weekly Press

Editor's Note: This article revisits the wrongful conviction of Jonathan Fleming, who was exonerated in April 2014 after spending nearly 25 years in prison for a Brooklyn murder he did not commit. The case remains a significant example of how withheld evidence can contribute to a miscarriage of justice.

A murder in Brooklyn, an alibi in Florida

NEW YORK — For nearly a quarter-century, Jonathan Fleming insisted he was innocent of a Brooklyn murder. His defense was straightforward: He was more than 1,000 miles away, vacationing with his family at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, when his friend was shot and killed.

What Fleming did not know was that one of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting his innocence had been sitting in a police file since his arrest.

The evidence included an $81.92 hotel telephone bill receipt, time-stamped just hours before the killing, and a police report confirming that hotel employees remembered seeing him in Florida.

Neither document was presented to the jury that convicted him.

Fleming was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in 1990. It would take until April 8, 2014, for a Brooklyn judge to overturn his conviction and restore his freedom.

By then, Fleming was 51 years old. He had spent approximately 24 years and eight months incarcerated for a murder he did not commit.

A vacation that became a murder defense

On Aug. 15, 1989, Darryl Rush, known to friends as "Black," was shot to death outside a Brooklyn housing project at approximately 2:15 a.m.

Authorities suspected the killing stemmed from a dispute involving money.

Fleming, then 27, became a suspect despite maintaining that he had traveled to Florida with relatives, including his mother, Patricia Fleming.

His family had photographs, airline tickets, postcards and vacation videos supporting his account. Several relatives testified at his trial that he had been with them in Orlando.

But prosecutors argued that Fleming could have flown from Florida to New York, committed the murder and returned to Orlando before his absence was noticed.

During the 1990 trial, Assistant District Attorney James Leeper told jurors there were numerous flights Fleming could have taken to carry out such a trip.

The jury accepted the prosecution's case and convicted Fleming of murder.

The eyewitness who changed her story

Central to the prosecution's case was testimony from a woman who claimed she had witnessed Fleming shoot Rush.

Her identification helped overcome Fleming's alibi.

But shortly after the conviction, the woman recanted her testimony, saying she had falsely identified Fleming because she feared prosecution in an unrelated criminal case.

Investigators later discovered police records showing the woman had been arrested in connection with a stolen vehicle. After identifying Fleming, the charges against her were dismissed.

Additional scrutiny raised questions about her ability to identify the shooter. Investigators found that she had been more than 400 feet from the shooting and had not been wearing her glasses.

Despite the recantation, prosecutors maintained that her original testimony was credible, and Fleming's efforts to overturn his conviction repeatedly failed.

The National Registry of Exonerations subsequently classified the case as involving false accusation or perjury and official misconduct.

The receipt that changed everything

The most consequential discovery came more than two decades after Fleming's conviction.

During a renewed investigation in 2013, attorneys and prosecutors examining the original case files discovered a receipt from the Quality Inn in Orlando.

The document showed Fleming had personally paid an $81.92 telephone bill at 9:27 p.m. on Aug. 14, 1989.

Rush was killed in Brooklyn at approximately 2:15 a.m. the following morning.

The receipt placed Fleming in Orlando less than five hours before the shooting.

Even more troubling, police had recovered the receipt from Fleming's pocket when he was arrested in 1989.

The document had been in the authorities' possession all along.

Investigators also uncovered an Orlando Police Department report indicating that hotel employees remembered seeing Fleming during the relevant period.

That information was never disclosed to his original defense attorney.

Under constitutional disclosure requirements, prosecutors must provide the defense with material evidence favorable to the accused. Withholding such evidence can undermine the fairness of a criminal trial.

In Fleming's case, the undisclosed documents directly supported the alibi prosecutors had challenged in court.

New witnesses and a changing district attorney's office

Fleming's attorneys continued investigating even after years of unsuccessful appeals.

Their work uncovered witnesses who implicated another person in Rush's killing.

One man, suspected of having driven the getaway vehicle, told investigators that Fleming was not involved and identified someone else as the shooter.

The renewed investigation gained momentum as Brooklyn's district attorney's office faced increasing scrutiny over questionable convictions.

Charles Hynes, the longtime district attorney, had established a unit to review possible wrongful convictions. However, Fleming's case did not reach a resolution during his administration.

Kenneth Thompson defeated Hynes in the November 2013 election and took office in January 2014, promising a more aggressive review of disputed convictions.

Under Thompson's administration, the office reconsidered Fleming's case, including the evidence that had been withheld from the defense.

The resulting review fundamentally changed the prosecution's position.

Freedom after nearly 25 years

On April 8, 2014, prosecutors and defense attorneys jointly supported overturning Fleming's conviction.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Matthew D'Emic granted the motion, dismissed the indictment and ordered Fleming released.

His mother, who had testified decades earlier that her son was with her in Florida, was present to witness his release.

Outside the courthouse, Fleming expressed relief and gratitude after spending much of his adult life behind bars.

"I feel wonderful," he told reporters.

He also described his immediate plans: "I'm going to go eat dinner with my mother and my family, and I'm going to live the rest of my life."

For Patricia Fleming, the moment marked the end of a decadeslong effort to prove what she had maintained from the beginning: Her son had been with her when the murder occurred.

Millions in compensation, but decades lost

Fleming's exoneration eventually led to substantial financial settlements.

In June 2015, New York City agreed to pay him $6.25 million to resolve his wrongful incarceration claim.

City Comptroller Scott Stringer acknowledged that the settlement could not restore the years Fleming had lost.

The financial consequences extended beyond the original city settlement.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, Fleming also reached a $3.4 million settlement with New York state, bringing his combined compensation to approximately $9.65 million.

But the compensation came with another painful reminder of the years he had lost.

After signing the city settlement documents in 2015, Fleming traveled to a hospital where his mother was seriously ill and reportedly near death.

The woman who had spent decades fighting for her son's freedom had lived long enough to see him exonerated.

A case that exposed failures in the justice system

Fleming's case raised questions that extended beyond one wrongful conviction.

How could evidence recovered at the time of an arrest remain undisclosed for decades? Why did a recanted eyewitness identification fail to produce a meaningful reassessment of the conviction? And what safeguards could prevent similar miscarriages of justice?

The case also brought scrutiny to the handling of evidence by the original prosecution team.

Leeper, the prosecutor who secured Fleming's conviction, left the Brooklyn district attorney's office in 2014 after 27 years of service. Public reporting at the time did not establish that his departure resulted from Fleming's exoneration.

The case illustrates the importance of prosecutorial disclosure, independent conviction reviews and the preservation of evidence that could establish a defendant's innocence.

The National Registry of Exonerations identifies official misconduct and false testimony as contributing factors in Fleming's wrongful conviction. DNA testing did not play a role in clearing him.

Instead, the decisive evidence came from ordinary documents, witness interviews and records that had existed for decades.

The price of justice delayed

Jonathan Fleming entered prison as a young man and emerged in middle age.

He missed nearly 25 years of family gatherings, birthdays, holidays and everyday experiences that no financial settlement could replace.

His case remains a reminder that wrongful convictions do not always require complicated forensic discoveries to unravel. Sometimes the evidence is already available, waiting to be examined and disclosed.

In Fleming's case, a receipt worth $81.92 helped expose a wrongful conviction that ultimately cost taxpayers millions of dollars and an innocent man nearly a quarter-century of freedom.

The document had been there from the beginning.

Justice had not.