Man convicted of killing rabbi freed after 23 years

A man who spent more than two decades behind bars was freed by a judge Thursday after a reinvestigation of his case cast serious doubt on evidence used to convict him in the cold-blooded shooting of a Brooklyn rabbi.

In paperwork filed in advance of David Ranta's appearance in state court in Brooklyn, prosecutors told the judge they would support a defense motion to vacate his conviction and ask for a dismissal of his indictment.

After a recent review, they said, they "no longer have sufficient evidence to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."

Ranta, 58, had claimed he was wrongly convicted and rotting in a Buffalo prison for no reason.

The case dated to Feb. 8, 1990, when a gunman botched an attempt to rob a diamond courier in Williamsburg. The courier escaped unharmed, but the man went to the car of Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger -- a Holocaust survivor and a leader of the Satmar Hasidic community -- shot him in the forehead, pulled him out of the vehicle and drove away in it.

Thousands attended the rabbi's funeral, and then-Mayor David Dinkins offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. After Ranta the arrested, Hasidic Jews surrounded the car that carried him to jail and chanted, "Death penalty!"

Though no physical evidence linked the unemployed drug addict to the crime, a jury found him guilty in May 1991 based on witness testimony and circumstantial evidence. He was sentenced to 37 1/2 years in prison.

The case began to unravel after the Brooklyn district attorney's office launched a review by its newly formed Conviction Integrity Unit in 2011. That same year, a man named Menachem Lieberman had approached Ranta's trial lawyer to tell him he "had uncertainty and discomfort" with his identification of Ranta, and later gave the unit a sworn statement recounting how a detective had told him to "pick the one with the big nose" -- Ranta -- out of a police lineup.

Other interviews done by the unit suggested an alleged accomplice-turned-prosecution witness -- now dead -- had pinned the shooting on Ranta to save himself. A woman also repeated claims that her deceased husband privately confessed he was the killer.

The unit also found gaps in police paperwork intended to document their investigation. And Ranta denied he knowingly signed police file folders with statements saying he'd helped plan the robbery.

Ranta "claimed he had signed a blank file folder . . . only because he thought it was a form to allow him to make a phone call," court papers said.

The decision by the Brooklyn district attorney's office to support tossing out the conviction has shocked relatives of Werzberger, said Isaac Abraham, a close family friend. They believe there's still credible evidence Ranta participated, he said.

"For this to happen 23 years later is mind-boggling," Abraham said. "He can only claim he wasn't the shooter but he can never claim he wasn't involved."