BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: Legal experts have warned that prosecution could face "potentially devastating" consequences due to Claudia Morales’ inability to identify her boyfriend Ryan Carson's suspected killer during a photo line-up.
Morales and Carson were returning from a wedding on October 2 when the 32-year-old poet and NYC activist was brutally stabbed multiple times in the chest during an unprovoked attack at around 4 am near Lafayette Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard in Brooklyn.
A security footage of the incident apparently showed Morales pleading with the attacker to spare them, crying, "Please, please, please!"
Carson was an advocate of social justice and left-wing causes, including spearheading a drive to implement drug injection sites across the city, and was a passionate environmentalist.
Meanwhile, not much is known about his girlfriend Morales but she is identified to be an avid BLM activist who, among other remarks, allegedly used the cop-hating acronym ACAB in some posts, according to her now locked-down social media profiles.
Claudia Morales 'mis-picked' Ryan Carson's killer
In a court hearing on Thursday, October 5, Brooklyn Prosecutor Jordan Rossman noted that Morales, a witness of Carson’s slaying, 'mis-picked' his 18-year-old Killer Brian Dowling when she was shown a group of photographs, the New York Daily News reported.
“She picked a different person than the defendant out of the photo array,” Rossman said. A police official stated that the girlfriend reportedly remains traumatized by the incident and has had difficulty recounting basics, as per ABC 7.
However, Dowling was finally arrested on Thursday after two other witnesses identified him from the surveillance video and cops found a knife believed to be the alleged murder weapon and a sweatshirt matching the one the attacker wore at his home.
Police questioned Dowling at the 81st Precinct before he was charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
How Claudia Morales’ inability to identify the killer could harm the case?
Mark Bederow, a former Manhattan prosecutor who is not involved in the case, recently stated that Morales’ inability to identify Dowling was “potentially devastating and crippling” to the prosecution's case but added that it "doesn't by any means mean that it's over.”
“It's really too early to tell," said Bederow, who now is a defense lawyer, he added, according to the Messenger.
However, Bederow continued by claiming that there is further information in the case that could lessen any potential harm from the photo array misidentification.
“If they found a weapon at this guy's apartment and it has the DNA of the victim, that's compelling in the other direction,” he said.
Julie Rendelman, a former Brooklyn prosecutor and now a defense attorney, said the failed photo array was “something the defense can use to raise potentially reasonable doubt”
However, she also noted that “the stabbing is caught on video and the defendant's face is fairly clear.”
“'It will likely be argued by the prosecution that the witness' trauma in watching her boyfriend be stabbed before her eyes impacted her ability to identify the defendant,” Rendelman continued.
Kenneth Jamal Montgomery, Dowling's defense attorney, acknowledged that the girlfriend's strange behavior and inability to identify his client could undermine the prosecution's case and could be helpful at trial.
“However, I am waiting to review the discovery and all of its context,” Montgomery added, according to Daily Mail.
