Danny Colon
Danny Colon spent 20 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. The Manhattan District Attorney recently cleared him of the charges.
On the day his torturous two-decade legal odyssey ended, the squawking sea gulls of Coney Island sounded like a choir of seaside angels to Danny Colon.
"Not like the gulls at Green Haven, circling for food," said Colon, who spent 16 years inside that state correctional facility. "It's different sitting on the beach."
Colon, 47, is adjusting to a life's worth of changes after beating a 1993 double murder conviction - for a crime committed by somebody else.
His vindication came despite a lying witness and a prosecutor's shady dealings, and after a longshot legal battle dating to the Dinkins administration.
"The truth, I figured, would come out sooner or later," Colon said at his lawyer's office. "It came out later. Much later."
The saga begins on Dec. 8, 1989. In a city where crack was still king, two men were murdered in a drug-related drive-by shooting on the lower East Side.
Colon and Anthony Ortiz were jailed in the fall of 1990 on the word of a single witness - drug-dealing junkie Anibel Vera.
Colon, a partner in a Brooklyn carpet business, was stunned when cops slapped on the cuffs. And he was doubly staggered to discover his accuser was Vera, a one-time close friend and neighbor.
"Dumbstruck," said Colon, adding they had a falling out after Vera robbed his home. "When he started testifying, I was really angry. My world was spinning."
Vera's sworn identification led to Colon's 1993 conviction. The sentence: 50 years to life.
Colon was disappointed, distraught, disgusted - but his faith never wavered.
"I read the Bible," he said. "I just started believing that one day, you know, God was going to overturn this conviction."
Colon believed in something else: God helps those who help themselves. He became a savvy jailhouse lawyer, filing assorted forms and motions from behind bars.
But it was a nine-page letter, not a court document, that became Colon's most important prison appeal.
It was written one decade into his jail time. There was no dry legalese, just an emotional plea for help.
And it was addressed to Anibel Vera.
"You know what they say: First you write with your feelings. And then you rewrite," said Colon. "And then it was a nine-page letter, asking 'How could you have done this to me?'"
A week later, Vera contacted Colon's parents and agreed to answer dozens of questions about the case. A story emerged: Prosecutors had a hush-hush deal with Vera to secure his cooperation.
There were allegations of a lenient plea bargain, a free pass on weapons possession, the relocation of his grandparents.
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