A retired NYPD detective accused of rigging dozens of murder cases has cost taxpayers $110million in settlements from 14 overturned convictions.
Louis N. Scarcella, known to colleagues as ‘the closer,’ allegedly coerced confessions and made up witness testimony to help secure convictions leading to people spending decades locked up before being exonerated.
The cost to the taxpayer has been colossal. New York City has paid $73.1 million in settlements to people investigated by the former detective, and the state has paid out another $36.9 million, according to The New York Times.
The city is expected to be on the hook for tens of millions more, as three men cleared last year of burning a subway token clerk alive in 1995 have filed lawsuits.
A second-generation cop who smoked cigars, ran marathons, worked a side job at a Coney Island amusement park and jokingly put ‘adventurer’ on his business card, Scarcella, now 72, worked in the Brooklyn North homicide squad during the crack epidemic of the eighties and nineties.
Hellbound and Down 