Man Jailed For 30 Years Says He Was Forced Into Murder Confession, New Lawsuit Says

BROOKLYN, NY — A Brooklyn resident filed suit against Nassau County and five Nassau County Police Department detectives Tuesday, accusing detectives and the DA’s office of forcing him to sign a false murder confession more than 30 years ago.

The suit also accuses the county and NCPD of withholding evidence from his defense counsel that might have exonerated him of the murder charge.

According to a civil complaint, Brooklyn resident Christopher Ellis spent over 30 years in jail for a murder he didn’t commit. The complaint lists Nassau County and NCPD detectives John Comiskey, George Pierce, Robert Shaw, Richard Wells and Robert Winter as codefendants, seeking compensatory damages against the county and the detectives, in addition to punitive damages against the detectives.

Patch contacted the Nassau County Police Department and Nassau County PBA to confirm whether or not Comiskey, Pierce, Shaw, Wells and Winter are still with the department.

The PBA declined to comment; NCPD did not immediately respond.

Patch also reached out to a spokesperson for Nassau County Tuesday and asked for comment on the Ellis case, but received no response.

Ellis's attorneys said Tuesday: "The defendants deny any wrongdoing, and the allegations will be tested in court."

“I lost more than 30 years of my life for something I did not do,” Ellis said in a statement released by his attorneys Tuesday. “You can’t give that time back. I missed decades with my family, milestones, and opportunities I will never get again. I’m bringing this case to seek accountability and to help ensure this does not happen to anyone else.”

According to Tuesday’s complaint, Ellis was convicted in 1993 of second-degree murder, in connection with the death of Joseph Healy. He was also convicted of two first-degree counts of robbery, two second-degree counts of criminal possession of a weapon, two third-degree counts of criminal possession of a weapon and a third-degree count of criminal possession of stolen property, the complaint reads. He was sentenced to 33 and one-third years in jail for these charges, the complaint said.

After filing an appeal, Ellis’s conviction was affirmed in 1995, the complaint reads. Then, 24 years later, according to the complaint, he filed a motion to challenge his conviction in 2019, claiming that new evidence had come to light — including an eyewitness account of the Healy murder that had not been disclosed to Ellis or his counsel.

According to Ellis’s complaint, police had failed to disclose the account of Cynthia Louissaint, an eyewitness of the murder who had repeatedly told police Ellis was not one of the men who shot Healy.

"[NCPD Detective] Wells showed Ms. Louissaint photographs of potential suspects at least twenty-five times, because, according to Defendant Wells, Ms. Louissaint was 'in a better position to identify' the perpetrators," the complaint reads. "Defendant Wells showed Ms. Louissaint photographs of Mr. Ellis numerous times, including after Mr. Ellis had been arrested. Ms. Louissaint recognized Mr. Ellis from the newspaper as one of the men arrested for the Arby’s Shooting, and repeatedly told Defendant Wells that Mr. Ellis was not one of the men she saw at the scene of the Arby’s Shooting. Ms. Louissaint’s statements to Defendant Wells repeatedly excluded Mr. Ellis as a suspect."

In the months after his CPL suit was filed, the Nassau County District Attorney’s conviction integrity bureau, through collaboration with Ellis’s attorneys, recovered over 100 pages of documents that Ellis’s attorneys describe as “exculpatory” including including several murder leads, confessions, sworn statements, and police notes, none of which had been disclosed to Ellis and his attorneys, the complaint stated.

Ellis filed an amended motion that included this detail shortly thereafter, the complaint says, and on Jul. 3, 2021, his murder conviction was vacated.

Two months later, however, the DA’s office announced they would be retrying the case, the complaint continued.

According to the Tuesday complaint, that retrial revealed a 234-page file, “consisting of NCPD police notes, homicide lead sheets, arrest records, and statements by witnesses and suspects from the NCPD investigation, all pointing to additional leads and suspects never before disclosed, as well as further information about leads, suspects, and witnesses first disclosed in 2020.”

On Jan. 24, 2025, Ellis was acquitted after a weeklong trial, and his indictment was dismissed, the complaint reads. In total, his attorneys said he spent 11,133 days in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

Speaking to Patch Tuesday, Eric Abrams, a member of Harris’s counsel at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, said the civil case would go to trial in Islip, if it goes to trial. In the meantime, Abrams said, Ellis is trying to catch up.

“He's a lovely man. He's in his 50s, and he's trying to catch up. It's hard to catch up after 30 years away,” Abrams said. “The world is different, obviously, than it was in the 90s when he went away. His son was basically a newborn. He was a few months old at the time [Ellis] went away, and so it's a lot of catching up to do. But we're really looking forward to litigating this case on his behalf, and to…try to provide some measure of justice. It's almost a trope, but you can't get those years of his life back. But hopefully we can find some accountability and justice for him.”

The complaint claims that Ellis's constitutional rights were violated "coercive interrogation practices, the fabrication and use of unreliable evidence, improper identification procedures, and the suppression of material exculpatory evidence," Ellis's attorneys said Tuesday.

As for Ellis, the complaint doesn’t list a dollar amount that he and his attorneys are looking for. When asked what conversations they might’ve had with Ellis regarding the damages in the case, Abrams declined to put a number on it.

“To the extent that there are numbers to be put on it, we think a jury should be the one to decide that,” Abrams said. “The compensation that we're looking for, here, is to give some level of justice for 30 years in prison. So, numbers we will leave to the court, and to a jury of [Ellis’s] peers, but that's the harm. And we detail in the complaint the significant harm that he faced, and that he incurred, over those 30 years. Family members passed away. He didn't get to raise his son. So, again, numbers we’ll leave to the jury, but significant harm was caused to Mr. Ellis and we hope he'll be compensated accordingly.”