He was 5 foot 2. The detective had to bring out stools so the police lineup could be done sitting down, so John Bunn wouldn't look obviously shorter than the adults around him. He was 14 years old. He held up a number. And a witness who had described his attackers as two men in their twenties — picked him.
A Morning That Changed Everything
John Bunn grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, raised by his mother, spending most of his time in a four-block radius between his mother's apartment on Ralph Street and his grandmother's on St. Marks Avenue. On August 14, 1991, he was in his mother's kitchen when police knocked on the door. They wanted to take him to the 77th Precinct for questioning.
He was 14 years old. He had nothing to do with what they were about to tell him.
On August 14, 1991, two Rikers Island corrections officers — Rolando Neischer and Robert Crosson — had been shot during a robbery near the Kingsborough Housing Projects. Neischer died. Crosson survived and initially described the attackers as two light-skinned Black men in their twenties. Detective Louis Scarcella, of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad, arrested Bunn and a 17-year-old named Rosean Hargrave the following day, based on an anonymous tip. Neither teen matched Crosson's description. Bunn was 5'2" and weighed roughly 100 pounds.
At the precinct, Scarcella threatened Bunn, telling him he'd never see his family again if he didn't cooperate. Bunn was placed in a lineup with adult men, using stools to equalize their heights. Crosson then identified Bunn and Hargrave — the two teenagers — as the men who had shot him and killed his partner. No physical evidence — no fingerprints, no DNA, no weapon — ever linked either of them to the crime scene.
A Trial That Lasted One Day
Bunn and Hargrave's trial took place in November 1992, on Thanksgiving eve. It lasted a single day. Four witnesses testified. The jury convicted both teenagers of second-degree murder. Bunn was sentenced to nine years to life in prison. He was held in a juvenile facility in upstate New York, then transferred to Elmira Correctional Facility at 17. He taught himself to read at a higher level in prison, eventually earning his GED.
He was paroled in 2006 after 17 years — in part because he had saved a prison counselor from being assaulted by another inmate. But being paroled didn't mean being free. His conviction stood. His name remained on the record as a convicted murderer. He spent the next twelve years fighting to clear it.
A Detective With a Pattern
In 2013, Louis Scarcella's cases began unraveling publicly. Investigators and journalists discovered a systematic pattern of misconduct — fabricated witness statements, coerced confessions, manipulated lineups — spanning dozens of cases from his time in the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad. The Brooklyn District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit began working through his cases one by one.
In April 2015, Justice ShawnDya Simpson vacated Rosean Hargrave's conviction, citing Scarcella's "false and misleading practices." In 2018, after the Exoneration Initiative — a nonprofit providing free legal assistance to wrongfully convicted people in New York — built a full case on Bunn's behalf, Simpson vacated his conviction as well. The DA's office declined to retry either case.
Bunn broke down in the courtroom after the judge read her decision. "The truth didn't prevail when it should have," he said afterward. "My side of the story never came out. I never got a chance to have a voice."
A Settlement, and a New Mission
In 2020, the City of New York settled Bunn's lawsuit — for malicious prosecution, denial of due process, and civil rights conspiracy — for $5.9 million. His co-defendant Hargrave received separate settlements totaling $11.2 million from the city and state.
Since his exoneration, Bunn has founded a nonprofit organization called A Voice 4 the Unheard, focused on providing books and literacy support to incarcerated youth, and has become a public advocate for criminal justice reform. He has spoken extensively about the intersection of poverty, race, and wrongful conviction, and about the years — both inside and outside prison — that he can never get back.
A Scandal That Keeps Growing
Louis Scarcella has continued to deny wrongdoing. Qualified immunity and the statute of limitations have shielded him from direct legal consequences. But the damage his cases caused has continued to accumulate: as of June 2025, at least 21 people have had convictions vacated in cases connected to his investigations, representing more than 420 combined years of wrongful imprisonment. The city has paid approximately $150 million in settlements across those 17 defendants who received them. The Brooklyn DA's office is still reviewing cases connected to him.
John Bunn was 14 when he was arrested. He was 41 when he was exonerated. He had spent more than half of his life either in prison or under the shadow of a murder conviction that should never have been brought.
Sources
He spent 27 years wrongly convicted of murder — CNN
Disgraced ex-cop framed Crown Heights teen for murder: Lawsuit — Patch