An Incarcerated New Yorker Wrote About Fighting His Conviction. Here Are His Words.

This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Brooklyn native Terrell Eleby was 26 years old when he was convicted of a crime that he says he did not commit. He was at a game of cards with his then-wife Rosa Buie when the crime occurred, he says, and Buie was not called to testify at his trial.

Today, he’s in his 60s and has stage four cancer, but is still fighting his conviction from inside a maximum security prison in Wallkill, NY.

Eleby is one of over 50 people who wrote to New York Focus and Columbia Journalism Investigations with their claims of innocence in the past couple of years, as part of an investigation into wrongful conviction reviews across the state. Some said they have waited over a decade to have their cases re-investigated by local or statewide conviction integrity units, departments housed within district attorneys’ offices that are tasked with evaluating wrongful conviction claims.

“It’s becoming quite obvious to me … that I will never receive a just and fair re-investigation,” one incarcerated individual wrote in a letter. “I’m left to pray for a miracle,” said another.

Most of the people who wrote to New York Focus and CJI, including Eleby, had legally represented themselves in the process of applying for conviction reviews. Eleby gathered the records from his case, but could not get hold of a transcript the court had lost and some documents the DA’s office denied him access to, he said. He submitted his application to the Brooklyn CIU in 2013. Ten years later, he received a one-page letter stating that his case was closed.

“No one has embraced my plea for justice,” Eleby wrote in his 2024 letter to New York Focus and CJI.

A spokesperson for the Brooklyn DA’s office said that they had not found “a shred of evidence” of Eleby’s innocence and that the Brooklyn CIU didn’t exist in 2013, even though reporting showed .that the Brooklyn CIU was formed in 2011, and its first exoneration occurred in 2013.

This video brings Eleby’s letters and story to life, with the help of Greg Mingo, who served over 40 years in New York’s prison system himself before receiving clemency.

—

Previously Published on nysfocus

***