In April 1993, Craig D. Harvey, a
New York State Police trooper was charged with fabricating evidence. Harvey admitted he and
another trooper lifted fingerprints from items the suspect, John Spencer,
touched while in Troop C headquarters during booking. He attached the
fingerprints to evidence cards and later claimed that he had pulled the
fingerprints from the scene of the murder. The forged
evidence was presented during John Spencer's trial and his subsequent
conviction resulted in a term, of 50 years to life in prison, at his
sentencing.[1]
One fabrication involved the 1989
murders of the Harris family of Dryden,
New York. In their home, Warren and Dolores
Harris, their daughter, Shelby, 15, and their
son, Marc, 11, were bound and blindfolded, Shelby was raped and sodomized, all four were
shot in the head and the house was doused with gasoline and set afire. State
police investigators say that evidence led them to Michael Kinge, and that
officers killed him when he pointed a shotgun at them during the arrest. His
mother, Shirley Kinge, admitted to using a credit card stolen from the Harris
home. Officers David L. Harding and Robert M. Lishansky, of Troop C, admitted
they took fingerprints of Ms. Kinge from her work place and claimed to have
found them on gasoline cans found at the Harris home. She was convicted of
burglary and arson and received a sentence of 17 to 44 years in prison. She
served two and a half years before it was revealed that the evidence had been
fabricated. Her conviction was later overturned.[2]
"In a February 2008 ruling,
Midey found that the 73-year-old Kinge was the victim of malicious prosecution
and negligent supervision of a state police investigator who planted phony
fingerprint evidence and gave false testimony linking her to the Harris family
slayings in 1989." Kinge was awarded $250,000 in compensation for the
nearly 2½ years she spent behind bars.
