Harry Ruiz, 57, sat in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday afternoon over 30 years after being convicted of a murder he did not commit. The road to justice was long, but it finally ended in a matter of moments when Judge Robert Mandelbaum vacated the conviction.
All Ruiz could do was clasp his mouth and then fall into the arms of his attorney, Ron Kuby. “I can finally breathe. I can finally live life,” Ruiz said.
According to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Alvin Bragg moved to vacate the conviction and dismiss the original indictment based on newly discovered evidence, including allegations that prosecutors in the early 1990s withheld evidence and even paid off a witness to secure the conviction.
Ruiz was accused of shooting 23-year-old Emmanuel Felix to death on Aug. 29, 1993. Felix was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head along Amsterdam Avenue between West 135th and 136th Streets in West Harlem.
Days later, a 13-year-old girl said she saw the then 25-year-old Ruiz that day fleeing the area with a handgun. Over the course of several interviews, the teen would change her story, initially saying she had not seen Ruiz before, but then later said she had. It helped lead to Ruiz’s arrest.
When his trial began in November of 1994, when asked to point Ruiz out in court, she picked the wrong man before later identifying him. Although Ruiz family members testified that he had been with them in his apartment at the time of the shooting, prosecutors relied on the testimony of the teen, and it ultimately got him convicted.
“I fell through the cracks at that time,” Ruiz said following his exoneration. “Back then, it was a hot mess how they were handling the cases and just putting people away.”
Ruiz served 25 years in prison and was not paroled until 2019, during which time he said he missed so many birthdays and family events. Even so, he refused to admit any wrongdoing in the slaying, even when it could have lightened his sentence.
“Harry Ruiz has always maintained his innocence,” Bragg said. “Our thorough reinvestigation included dozens of witness interviews and an in-depth document review, which uncovered new evidence that significantly undermines the case presented at trial in 1994. While Mr. Ruiz has already served 25 years in prison, his name deserves to be permanently cleared.”
As Ruiz sat in the courtroom along with Kuby, his eyes welled up as he listened to Judge Mandelbaum underscore facts of the case that he had never known. According to court documents, prosecutors allegedly paid off the teen witness and her mother, who had substance abuse issues. The girl and her mother reportedly received $17,000 rent, living expenses. The District Attorney at the time even requested that NYCHA expedite the family’s application for public housing.
“Listening to what was happening in the courtroom with all the evidence that was suppressed was a shock to me, because I never knew a lot of this stuff,” Ruiz shared. “It hurt my heart. I really did. It hurt my heart to hear what they did at that time.”
During his quarter-century stint behind bars, Ruiz said he believed many innocent men were also serving sentences for crimes they did not commit. This is not news to Bragg’s office. In 2022, he created the Post-Conviction Justice Unit and vacated 14 convictions, including those of eight homicides.
Still, Kuby pointed out that the misdeeds of previous prosecutors will long cast their shadow over Ruiz’s life.
“Sometimes in cases like this, there’s a single mistake or a mistake that just doesn’t get caught. That was not the case; the old district attorney’s office knowingly and deliberately suppressed massive quantities of evidence that they were required to disclose to the defense. They suppressed the money they were giving to the young witness and her drug addicted mother. They suppressed all the favors that they did for her,” Kuby said. “Under the old regime, the way they avoided having to account for wrongful convictions is they said there weren’t any, and they would double and triple down on their misconduct.”
Court records show that a man identified as J.M. later confirmed that he ran a drug organization in the 1990’s and admitted to hiring a man known as “Shorty” to murder Felix. J.M. stated that he had paid $4,000 to “Shorty” prior to the murder, and $4,000 upon completion. He also signed an affidavit stating that the person he hired to commit the crime, “Shorty” , was not Ruiz.
Following his exoneration, Ruiz said he is happy to live his life without a chip on his shoulder. But the moment was bittersweet because his mother had just passed away and could not share the occasion with him.
“The only thing that I’m sad about, and I keep repeating to myself, is that I just lost my mom, and that woman was my rock. She’s gone, but I know she’s here today, you know, and I’m very grateful for that,” Ruiz said. “Today is the day, and I thank God for that.”
