FREE AT LAST: Judge releases man wrongfully imprisoned in 1990 murder of a Brooklyn rabbi
A man who spent more than two decades behind bars was freed by a judge on Thursday after a reinvestigation of his case cast serious doubt on evidence used to convict him in the shooting of a Brooklyn rabbi.
With the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office acknowledging that the case had been “significantly eroded,” Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Miriam Cyrulnik vacated the judgment and murder indictment against David Ranta, ordering him a free man.
Ranta, now 58, was greeted by emotional gasps from his family members as he entered Cyrulnik’s courtroom from the Wende Correctional Facility in Erie County, N.Y. Ranta had served 23 years of a 37½ years-to-life sentence for the murder of Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger.