Murder Conviction Vacated For LI Man Who Spent 33 Years in Prison

BELLPORT, NY — A long 44 years after he was arrested, a man's 1976 murder conviction was overturned, Suffolk County District Attorney Tim Sini said.

The exoneration marked the longest-running murder case to be overturned in New York State history, the DA said.

The case was overturned after an investigation by the DA Office’s Conviction Integrity Bureau, which resulted in a filing in support of vacating Keith Bush’s 1976 conviction for the murder and attempted rape of 14-year-old Sherese Watson on Jan. 11, 1975, in Bellport, Sini said.

Bush, now 62, served 33 years in prison in connection with the murder and, until his exoneration, remained under state-supervised release as a lifetime parolee, Sini said. His status as a registered level three sex offender, the highest risk level in New York State, was also vacated Wednesday.

The motion to vacate Bush’s conviction was filed in Suffolk County Court Wednesday by his defense counsel, Adele Bernhard, director of New York Law School’s Post-Conviction Innocence Clinic, and an affirmation in support of the motion to vacate was filed by Sini, the DA said.

Suffolk County Court Judge Anthony S. Senft, Jr. granted the motion, thus vacating Bush’s conviction and sentence and dismissing the charges that had been filed against him 44 years ago, Sini said.

The filing in support of vacating the conviction and dismissing the indictment against Bush was the result of an "exhaustive" nine-month investigation and review of the case by the Conviction Integrity Bureau, which was created by Sini when he took office in January, 2018, the DA said.

On Friday, Jan. 10, 1975, a Bellport resident named Pearl Jackson hosted a party at her house, located at 735 Bourdois Avenue, Sini said. The party began at 9 p.m. and ended at 3 a.m. on Saturday; about 75 to 100 people attended the party, including Bush, then 17 years old, and Sherese Watson, Sini said.

Watson left the party at 1:30 a.m. Saturday but never returned home; her remains were discovered two days later in a field on the east side of Meade Avenue, between Brookhaven Avenue and Hampton Avenue.

She was a victim of attempted rape, physical assault, and murder by strangulation, Sini said.

Detectives identified Bush as a suspect, despite the fact that he gave a alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the murder, based on information that Bush was the last person seen talking to Watson before she left, as further supplemented by a statement from a 15-year-old runaway named Maxine Bell, which she later recanted, in which she described Bush leaving the party “hugged up” to Watson, Sini said.

On April 14, 1975, Bush was taken in for interrogation by the detectives assigned to investigate the Watson murder; after several hours of questioning, during which Bush said he was subjected to beatings and other forms of physical and psychological coercion, Bush signed a confession in which he described trying to have sex with Watson, stabbing her with a metal hair pick in the back, then strangling her when she screamed after being stabbed.

After signing the statement, Bush was placed under arrest; soon after, police executed a search warrant and obtained a metal hair pick from Bush’s cousin that the prosecution alleged at trial was Bush’s, Sini said.

Bush maintained his innocence through trial and testified in his own defense; after four days of deliberations, Bush was convicted on April 2, 1976 by the jury of second degree murder and first degree attempted sexual abuse, Sini said. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

Meanwhile, in late April 1975, after Bush’s arrest but before trial, the assigned detectives became aware of an alternative suspect in Watson’s murder, a 21-year-old man named John Jones, Sini said.

While the circumstances under which Jones came to the attention of police are unknown, his criminal history records reflect that he had been arrested for unauthorized use of a vehicle on April 18, 1975, suggesting that Jones may have made statements at the time of his arrest or provided fingerprints or other evidence that linked him to the Watson murder, Sini said.

On May 9, 1975, Jones provided a statement, witnessed by a detective assigned to the case, stating that he had attended the party at the Jackson home and had stumbled over Watson’s body while walking home to his sister’s house, losing his black plastic hair pick when he tripped over her.

The black plastic hair pick had been recovered by police next to Watson’s body at the crime scene; Jones drew a map for detectives purporting to explain his route from the party to his sister’s home, which was due east of the party location, via Watson’s body, which was found several blocks west of the party.

According to police reports, Jones was also administered two polygraph tests in connection with the Watson murder: one as of May 1, 1975, which has not been located, and a second on July 7, 1975, that found Jones’ denial of involvement to display “slight indications of truthfulness,” Sini said.

The Arther method of polygraphy, which was used on Jones in the second test, has since come under considerable criticism as having significant scientific defects and is no longer considered reliable.

The existence of Jones as an alternative suspect — including his statement to police and the results of the two polygraph tests — were never disclosed to Bush’s defense attorney and were not mentioned at trial, Sini said.

Evidence concerning an alternative suspect was first produced to Bush via FOIL requests between October 2017 and April 2018; Jones died in 2006 before Bush was able to learn of his existence as an alternative suspect, Sini said.

Bush, however, spent 33 years in prison for the murder, and, upon his release in 2007, he was placed on lifetime parole and required to register as a Level Three sex offender, the highest risk level for New York State, Sini said.

Bush then spent an additional year in prison for a parole violation relating to his use of a computer with internet access, which he was using to write his memoir, Sini said.

Throughout his incarceration and post-release supervision, he continued to file a variety of direct appeals of and collateral attacks on his conviction, none of which were successful, as well as FOIL requests for records.

Bush filed an appeal of his conviction and was granted a post-trial evidentiary hearing in 1980, Sini said. At the hearing, Maxine Bell, then 21 years old, recanted her testimony that she had seen Bush leave the party with Watson on the night of the murder, Sini said. Bell testified at the hearing that her statement to the police and subsequent trial testimony were false, and that she had in fact not even been at the party on the night of Watson’s death, Sini said. The judge presiding over the hearing ruled that her recantation was not credible, and it was disregarded, Sini said.

In 2005, in response to a request from Bush, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office agreed to examine forensic evidence taken from Watson’s body and from the crime scene for the presence of DNA, including scrapings taken from underneath Watson’s fingernails following the discovery of her body, Sini said.

The testing found that Bush could not have been the source of male DNA fragments found in the fingernail scrapings, Sini said.

Testing of other crime scene evidence revealed another male DNA fragment that could not have come from Bush, Sini said.

The Office claimed that it did not exculpate Bush of the crime and opposed the request to vacate the conviction, and that request was denied Sini said.

In 2017, Bush’s attorney obtained autopsy reports and photos as well as materials from his Suffolk County Police file in response to a FOIL request, Sini said.

The autopsy records included photos and reports concerning the wounds on Watson’s back that were submitted to well-known forensic scientist Dr. Michael Baden, who said that the hair pick reportedly used by Bush to stab Watson could not have caused those wounds, nor could the wounds have been inflicted prior to her strangulation, as set forth in the confession signed by Bush, Sini said.

Bush also obtained documents concerning Jones via FOIL between October 2017 and April 2018 and, following receipt of the documents, Bush submitted an application to the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office’s CIB in July 2018, Sini said.

The Conviction Integrity Bureau’s investigation reached the following conclusions in support of vacating Bush’s conviction, Sini said: The prosecutor who investigated and prosecuted the case more than 40 years ago suppressed evidence concerning an alternative suspect, preventing Bush from learning about the suspect until the Suffolk County Police Department and Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office made the evidence available to him between October, 2017 and April, 2018, Sini said.

Evidence gathered by the CIB indicates that the individual was a probable suspect in the murder of Sherese Watson, Sini said.

"Bush’s confession, which he insisted from the outset was coerced by beatings and other misconduct, has been proven false in material respects and was elicited by a detective who alluded to use of coercive tactics when questioned by the CIB," Sini said.

In addition, the theory of the crime presented at trial has been debunked by forensic evidence, Sini said.

Also, a key witness against Bush at trial, a 15-year-old girl who testified that Bush and Watson left the party together, recanted under oath in 1980 and has maintained her recantation since that date, including to the CIB, which found corroboration for her recantation, Sini said.

Bush’s alibi defense has been supported by witnesses who have stated under oath that Bush in fact did have a valid alibi, and that they were prevented from testifying about that alibi by threats and intimidation prior to trial, Sini said.

Finally, Sini said, other evidence against Bush has been undermined by subsequent developments and re-investigation.

“The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office believes Keith Bush did not commit this murder, and we believe that justice was done today with the vacatur of Mr. Bush’s conviction and sentence and the dismissal of the indictment. We cannot give back what he lost, but it is our hope that this does some good in allowing Mr. Bush to move forward," Sini said.

At a press conference on May 22, Bush reflected on his journey: "I lived with a lot of pessimism about the criminal justice system because I’ve always experienced denial after denial, but there was something that drove me, enabled me to continue to fight and to continue to believe that if you persist long enough, ultimately you can succeed," he said.

"I placed my principals and my ethics on trust and the truth, and I tried to live by that hoping that this day would arrive. I think that because of my attorney and because of the current District Attorney’s Office, that day has arrived. They shook up my pessimism about the system because now I know and I believe that there is hope and there are good people in the system, as well as bad, and those possibilities enable us to find justice. I would like to say to the District Attorney’s Office that I am truly grateful for your efforts and for all that you have done in this particular case, and I would like to say to the world that when you have people that do good things, justice will follow," Bush said.

Bernhard described the process: "There was a new District Attorney out here, he had set up a Conviction [Integrity Bureau] and I thought to myself, ‘Let’s bring [Keith Bush’s case] to them. Let’s see what they think. Are they going to investigate this and be interested in this case the way I am?’ Lo and behold, they were. They dug in and went back and looked at every piece of evidence. They did what we did and more, so of course we couldn’t be more thrilled at the quality and sophistication and the detailed analysis that they brought to bear in addition to the information that we brought to them.”

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart added that the Suffolk County Police Department recognizes the importance of the work of the District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Bureau and has assigned a high-ranking supervisor to continue to assist in important investigations.

Suffolk County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Caplan explained that the crime laboratory of the Suffolk County Office of the Medical Examiner was asked to reevaluate forensic evidence from the death of Sherese Watson; the Medical Examiner’s Office was also asked to review the autopsy report.

"The following is a summary of our opinions: One, the injury pattern observed and described on the victim’s back is not consistent with being produced by the wooden-handle metal comb; two, the puncture wounds were inflicted after the victim was strangled, which contradicts the sequence of events set forth in the confession; three, there is insufficient DNA evidence to establish the presence or identity of another individual from material recovered beneath Sherese Watson’s fingernails; and four, a blood sample from John W. Jones obtained in an unrelated crime was deemed to be unsuitable for comparison to material obtained from the victim.”

Bush’s application to the Conviction Integrity Bureau sought relief from his conviction on the basis of the newly-discovered evidence concerning Jones and post-trial DNA testing, as well as the violation of Bush’s due process rights to receive exculpatory evidence under Brady v. Maryland, Sini said.

The Conviction Integrity Bureau’s findings, based on an investigation of the challenges Bush presented in his application, were that information about an alternative suspect was illegally suppressed; the confession was materially false; Maxine Bell’s recantation should be credited, and other evidence failed to support the guilty verdict, Sini said.

Bush supplied the names and affidavits of several witnesses who would have supported his defense but did not out of fear of the Suffolk County Police Department, Sini said.

The CIB evaluated the affidavits, interviewed witnesses, and concluded that Bush’s alibi witnesses, some of whom were afraid to testify as a result of pressure from the assigned officers, continued to support his account of his whereabouts on the night of the murder, Sini said.

"This provides further support for vacating the conviction," Sini said.