A 24-year-old man who has spent nearly SEVEN YEARS at Rikers Island awaiting trial has finally gotten a plea deal.
The Post reports that Carlos Montero, 24, who was incarcerated in October 2008 after prosecutors accused him of being involved in a fatal gang-related robbery, was offered a deal after pleading guilty to manslaughter last month. Montero will be sentenced to 13 years in state prison, and will get credit for time served.
The NY Post initially reported on Montero's case in June—he was arrested along with two cohorts in 2008, one of whom has been attempting to fight DNA evidence, hence the unbelievable time lag. As his attorney told The Marshall Project in June:
In one sense, it’s no one’s fault. In one sense, it’s circumstances. There are legitimate DNA issues. You had to hire experts to deal with DNA, there had to be motions filed and responded to, and decided by the courts. And now, after years of arguing over testing, the DA has said that she is not going to use the DNA. Had she said that years ago, the trial would have taken place years ago.
Experts say that Montero, who has been locked up since he was 17, might have set a record for time incarcerated while awaiting trial, but lengthy delays are not unusual. As of March of this year, there were over 400 inmates at Rikers Island who had been waiting for more than two years for trial, according to the New York Times—there were also six inmates who had been locked up for more than six years on pending cases.
In June, 22-year-old Kalief Browder, who spent three of his late teenage years in Rikers after getting arrested for a crime he did not commit, committed suicide. Browder suffered from serious depression after he was released, some of which was documented in a 7,000-plus article in The New Yorker last September.
