OT - After 33 Years In Prison, Former NYPD Detective Phillips Still Denied Parole

Anyone who has confidence in the court system in New York State should

look at what has happened to former NYPD detective William Phillips,

the cop who was a star witness at the Knapp Commission corruption

investigation in early '70s. Phillips was a "meateater" corrupt cop

who went looking for graft. His testimony shook the NYPD to its

rotten core. The organized collection rackets the police had ("the

pad") to collect payoffs from businesses became a thing of the past.

"Cooping" instead of patrolling became more difficult, as the power of

the Internal Affairs division increased.

How to punish Phillips for upsetting the rotten NYPD applecart? Why,

the old fashioned way, frame him for an unsolved three year murder,

the brutal killing prostitute Sharon Stango and her pimp in their

high rise apartment on East 57th Street and Third Avenue, NYC. Use

testimony from unsavory witnesses, who kept silent for three years,

witnesses who claimed they did not know Phillips was the cop who

testified live on Knapp Commission TV broadcasts. Witnesses who said

Phillips killed the two in a dispute over a $1,000 payoff, at a time

when $1,000 was chump change for Phillips.

Once Manhattan DA Hogan got hanging judge John Murtaugh assigned the

case, Phillips was dead meat, even being represented by F. Lee

Bailey. Bailey managed to get a second trial for Phillips, but by

then Phillips was no longer a news item and the DA had no problem

getting a conviction. Phillips has spent 33 years in prison for a

murder he did not commit.

In the early 70s, when the Knapp Commission was in session, there were

stories about Criminal Court judges who signed every search warrant

that came before them without question, judges who acted as rubber

stamps for the prosecution. One US Senator described these judges

sneeringly then as "the best judges money can buy." With few

exceptions, not that much has changed with New York judges in the

intervening decades, considering the Appellate Court's unanimous

decision turning down Phillips' parole application.

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Appeals Court Keeps Crooked NYPD Officer, 76, in Prison

Posted: Thursday, 12 April 2007 8:02PM

http://1010wins.com/pages/351655.php?contentType=4&contentId=409421

NEW YORK (AP) -- The state parole board acted properly when it refused

to free a former New York Police Department officer who was a key

witness at corruption hearings in the 1970s and has been in prison

since 1974, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

The 5-0 decision by the state Supreme Court's Appellate Division

reversed a lower court ruling that directed the board to parole the

aging and ailing William R. Phillips, who has been imprisoned 32

years.

Phillips, a star witness at the Knapp Commission hearings on police

corruption, was convicted in 1974 on two counts of murder and one of

attempted murder for fatally shooting a pimp and a prostitute and

wounding a witness while trying to collect protection money. He was

sentenced to 25 years to life.

Phillips, a police officer from 1957 to 1974, was arrested after he

appeared on television while giving Knapp Commission testimony. He was

identified as the person wanted for the two killings and for trying to

kill a third person.

Phillips, who will be 77 in May, has lost an eye to cancer, has had

surgery twice for prostate cancer and has had a stroke, his lawyer

Daniel M. Perez said.

In October 2006, Justice Marcy Friedman annulled the board's September

2005 rejection of Phillips' fourth parole request. She said the board

improperly based its decision on the seriousness of the crimes alone.

Phillips expressed deep remorse for his crimes, the judge said, and he

presented uncontradicted evidence of his unblemished record during his

three decades in maximum-security institutions.

She said the parole board "affirmatively recognized at the September

2005 hearing that petitioner can do no more to rehabilitate himself

and is not a threat to society.''

The judge said the board's decision to deny Phillips' parole petition

"was so irrational as to border on impropriety and should be

annulled.''

The Appellate Division disagreed.

"We conclude that the challenged determination was rationally based

upon appropriate considerations following a weighing of all applicable

statutory standards and factors,'' the appeals judges wrote.

The judges, suggesting that Phillips had not shown remorse or accepted

responsibility for his crimes, said that at his last parole hearing he

spoke so as "to avoid direct acknowledgment that he precipitated the

incident by his conduct in attempting to extort payment from his

victim.''

"In our view,'' the judges wrote, "notwithstanding the board's

recognition that he has been an exemplary inmate who no longer poses a

threat to society, other facts, properly considered as elements of the

factors listed in the statute, support the board's denial of parole.''

Perez, Phillips' lawyer, said, "We couldn't disagree with the decision

more strongly.''

He said he will ask permission to appeal to the state's highest

tribunal, the Court of Appeals in Albany.

It's not just New York..To a greater or lesser degree

they are all pretty much the same. Only the naive and

innocent think otherwise. Of course we all know a

sterling, honest officer or two. But, at eighty-five

winters, I remember my mama saying, "son don't get

into trouble with the police, because we don't have

any money." This is an area along with other government

functions that citizens need to keep a watchful eye

on or lose their freedom, house, dog, money, virginity,

etal.