Opinion ID: 2522805
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Agostini's Investigation and the Charges Against Manganiello

Text: On February 12, 2001, Acosta and Manganiello, on the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. shift, were assigned to patrol, separately, areas in the eastern quadrant of the Parkchester, which included the building at 1700 Metropolitan Avenue (1700 Metropolitan). At about 10:15 a.m., the Parkchester security office sent a message over the security radio system stating that there was a 1013meaning an officer downin the basement of 1700 Metropolitan. Manganiello, who had been on his way to a diner for a coffee break, raced to the scene, where numerous police cars had already arrived. Manganiello entered the basement and saw the bleeding body of Acosta. When NYPD crime scene investigators arrived, Manganiello left the building, but he was quickly stopped by NYPD Officer Mirian Nieves, who grabbed his hands and started sniffing them. Nieves and other officers asked Manganiello to come to the police station to help with the investigation. Manganiello agreed. Upon arriving at the station, Manganiello was placed in an interrogation room where he was questioned by Agostini. Agostini asked whether Manganiello knew of anyone who had animosity toward Acosta, and Manganiello described an incident in which Acosta had been assaulted by members of the Bloods gang, and another in which local thugs had threatened to shoot Acosta. Agostini then asked whether Manganiello had killed Acosta. Manganiello testified that when he responded that he had had nothing to do with it, Agostini stands up, pissed off and he's looking at me like a piece of garbage. (Tr. 68.) Agostini then called in two other detectives, and they strip-searched Manganiellowith Agostini even ripping a Band-Aid from Manganiello's finger. Manganiello was photographed, had his hands swabbed, and was placed in a cell. Manganiello had been left wearing only his pants and a tank top, and he asked to have more of his clothes returned because the cell was cold; Agostini just laughed at him. No gunshot residue was found on Manganiello's hands, and Agostini was instructed by his supervisors that there was no probable cause for Manganiello's arrest. Manganiello was released at 5 a.m. the next morning. He was given back his clothing, but Agostini, shoving him toward the exit, refused to allow him to put the laces in his shoes before leaving the station house. Agostini never followed up on the information given to him by Manganiello as to persons who had previously threatened or assaulted Acosta. Nor did he pass that information to the assistant district attorney in charge of the case (the ADA). Two days after the shooting, however, Agostini met with Terrence Alston, a member of the Bloods gang who had been in jail since some four months before the Acosta shooting but who claimed to have relevant information. Alston told Agostini that Manganiello had tried to hire Alston to kill a Parkchester security guard. (Manganiello testified in the present case that he had never met or spoken with Alston.) Alston also told Agostini that a friend named Johnny Baker had sold Manganiello a .22 caliber gunthe caliber of the gun used to shoot Acosta. When Agostini interviewed Baker, however, Baker credibly told Agostini that Alston had lied. When Agostini confronted Alston about this lie, Alston became angry and told Agostini not to interview witnesses produced by Alston unless Alston was present. Alston promised that if he were released from jail, he would, within four weeks, produce another witness for Agostini. Agostini viewed Alston as playing games to get out of jail (Tr. 256 (internal quotation marks omitted)), but he testified at trial in the present case that it did not occur to him that Alston might be planning to intimidate prospective witnesses when Alston said Agostini was not to interview them in Alston's absence ( see id. at 252). Approximately two weeks after the homicide, Agostini received information from a taxi driver who reported overhearing a passenger, Alfred Vasquez, say on a cell phone that Vasquez had seen a security officer get shot and was the only one who had seen the shooter. Agostini located and questioned Vasquez, who said that although he had made such a statement, it was simply a fabrication. Agostini accepted Vasquez's response without making any further inquiries, apparently neither confirming Vasquez's whereabouts at the time of the shooting nor having Vasquez's fingerprints compared against those found at the scene. On March 1, 2001, Agostini created a document that suggested that when Acosta was shot at 1700 Metropolitan, Manganiello was in the building. It is undisputed that, earlier on the morning of the shooting, Manganiello had responded to a call reporting a disturbance in that building. Three members of NYPD, including Officers Eric Rodriguez and [FNU] Ortiz, had also responded. Rodriguez and Ortiz were interviewed, on the night of the shooting, by NYPD Detective Richard E. Martinez, who reported in an NYPD Follow-Up formknown as a DD5that Rodriguez and Ortiz stated that Manganiello left the building with them. In Agostini's March 1 DD5, Agostini said that no one had seen Manganiello leave the building. Some two weeks after Agostini discovered that Alston had lied to him about Johnny Baker, Agostini and Martinez approached one Michael Booth, knowing that Booth was engaged in the unlawful activities of bookmaking and/or loan sharking. Agostini said he had information that a Parkchester security officer had tried to buy a gun from Booth. Booth at first refused to endorse that information; but Agostini and Martinez took him to the police station, searched him, and found a knife and betting slips bearing names and monetary amounts in his pockets. Agostini threatened to report Booth to the NYPD organized crime bureau. Only then did Booth agree to sign a statement to the effect that Manganiello had tried to buy a gun from him. (Manganiello testified at trial in the present case that he had never had such a conversation with Booth.) After Booth signed the statement, the detectives gave him back his knife, and he left the police station. No charges were filed against him; the gambling slips were placed in the Acosta murder case file maintained by Agostiniwhich later disappearedand Booth's name was not given to the organized crime bureau. Agostini gave Booth's statement to the ADA, who ultimately called Booth as a witness at the murder trial to testify that Manganiello had tried to buy a gun from him. In the present case, the ADA testified that she had not authorized Agostini or anyone else to withhold criminal charges against Booth in exchange for implicating Manganiello. ( See Tr. 638.) With respect to Alston, Agostini testified that he did not note in any of his DD5s his belief that Alston was playing games or that Alston wanted to be present when witnesses Alston produced were interviewed; nor did he mention to the district attorney's office Alston's insistence on being present at such interviews. The ADA, who testified that Agostini did not raise any concerns with her that, in order to get out of jail, Alston was making up stories (Tr. 647), arranged for Alston's release from jail in exchange for his testimony against [Manganiello] ( id. ). On April 5, 2001, after his release, Alston produced a teenager, Mark Damon, who told Agostini and the ADA that, in January 2001, Damon had sold Manganiello a gun. (Manganiello testified in the present case that he had not bought a gun from anyone in January 2001 and had never met Damon.) Agostini testified in the present case that he knew that Alston had provided [him with] false information, and he didn't know whether [Alston] was believable or not believable. ( Id. at 247.) Agostini said, He gave me false information ... once, but then he gave me the right information... the second time. ( Id. at 248.) The information given the second time also proved to be false. Prior to Manganiello's trial in 2004, Alston died, and Damon recanted his statement that he had sold Manganiello a gun. At trial in the present case, Agostini admitted that Alston had asked Damon to lie about Anthony Manganiello. ( Id. at 330; see also id. at 261 (Damon, in recanting, said Alston [had] made him say it.) (internal quotation marks omitted).) In the meantime, on April 20, 2001, Manganiello was arrested on a felony complaint signed by Agostini. On May 7, 2001, following testimony from Agostini, Alston, and several other witnesses, the grand jury indicted Manganiello on two counts of murder in the second degree and one count each of manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. Thereafter, the case file on the Acosta murder disappeared. It had contained, inter alia, handwritten notes by detectives of their interviews, including some that might have contradicted the grand jury testimony of certain witnesses. For example, one such witness was Walter Cobb, a porter at 1700 Metropolitan. Before the grand jury, Cobb testified that he was outside the building on the morning of February 12, 2001, when he heard shots, and that almost immediately (Tr. 93 (internal quotation marks omitted)), as he was about to unlock the basement door, it flew open ( id. (internal quotation marks omitted)) and Manganiello came out. That testimony was partially inconsistent with a DD5 prepared by Detective Martinez based on his interview of Cobb, in that Cobb told Martinez he did not have a key for the basement door; and it apparently differed in a more important respect from statements Cobb had made to NYPD Officer Alex Perez shortly after the shooting. Perez had responded to the officer down radio call; and after briefly canvassing the basement, he had gone outside and encountered Cobb, who described hearing gunshots. Cobb told Perez he saw Manganiello five minutes after hearing the gunshots. ( Id. at 521-22.) Perez himself was interviewed that evening by Martinez, and Perez did not tell Martinez that Cobb had seen Manganiello leaving the basement. ( See id. at 526-27.) Thus, Martinez testified that according to his DD5 on his interview of Perez, which Martinez gave to Agostini along with his handwritten notes of the interview, Cobb didn't say anything to Officer Perez about Mr. Manganiello coming out of a basement door. ( Id. at 403.) Agostini apparently did not call the discrepancies in Cobb's statements, e.g., as to where and when Cobb first saw Manganiello after the shooting, to the attention of the ADA. Although the ADA testified at trial in the present case that, before calling Cobb to the grand jury, she had been informed about all of Mr. Cobb's statements ( id. at 622), her prior deposition testimony was that she did not recall being made aware of a number of discrepancies in the statements Cobb made to various officers, including that Cobb originally did not say he saw Manganiello exit the basement seconds after he heard the shots ( id. at 623-24). Agostini, as the lead detective on the Acosta homicide, had responsibility for maintaining all the reports and evidence produced during the investigation and securing them for trial. When detectives completed their DD5s, they gave them to Agostini, along with their handwritten notes of their interviews. The notes were to be maintained in the case file in order to preserve the ability of the accused to cross-examine the witnesses at trial. In the present case, the DD5s were photocopied by the district attorney's office, which maintained copies and returned the originals to Agostini. Those originals, along with all of the handwritten notes, the arrest report, the results of the gunshot residue tests, and everything else in the case file (including Booth's incriminating betting slips), disappeared prior to Manganiello's trial. At various times Agostini gave conflicting testimony about, inter alia, where he had stored the case file before it disappeared. In a deposition in the present case, he testified that he had last left the box under his desk; at trial in the present case, he testified he had last left it on top of a locker in the detectives' locker room. In addition, Agostini testified that he had at one point given the entire case file to the ADA. This was contradicted both by Agostini's testimony at a pretrial hearing in the criminal case that he had not given the ADA his handwritten notes, and by the testimony of the ADA at trial in the present case. The ADA testified that she had represented to the trial judge in the criminal case that she never had possession of the homicide case file. When she asked for the file, it had disappeared. The ADA also testified that Agostini did not give her copies of the handwritten interview and investigative notes. Thus, in the criminal caseas in the present case Manganiello was not able to obtain some of the investigative materials to which he was entitled. One document that was not lost was a note that Agostini had found in a search of Manganiello's locker at the Parkchester. At a pretrial hearing in the criminal case, Agostini testified that Manganiello's note said I feel like killing somebody. The note actually said, I pray every day I will never have to kill someone. (Tr. 266-67.) The jury in the criminal case found Manganiello not guilty on all counts.