Deaf man's drug conviction is overturned amid corruption prosecution

The steady stream of corruption and abuse allegations poses a troubling question: Should judges and juries continue to give police testimony in these cases the benefit of the doubt?

Alphonso Griffin
Maria Pouchnikova

One indication that Alphonso Griffin, 28, may have been wrongfully convicted of selling drugs is that he is deaf. It's not that a deaf person couldn't sell drugs. It's that Philadelphia Police Officer Stephen Dmytryk testified he had twice observed a confidential informant "engaged in conversation" with Griffin while allegedly purchasing heroin and marijuana.

"We know this to be impossible because Griffin is deaf and needs a sign-language interpreter to understand his court proceedings," wrote Griffin's lawyer, public defender Eric Zuckerman, in an email to City Paper.

The implausibility of Griffin's alleged drug dealing, however, is not what prompted Judge Joan Brown, the same judge who convicted Griffin, to grant him a new trial last month. Brown did so because Officer Dmytryk makes an unsavory appearance in a straight-out-of-Hollywood federal indictment, announced just three weeks after Griffin's July 9, 2014, conviction, accusing six narcotics cops led by Officer Thomas Liciardello of violently robbing suspected drug dealers. A seventh officer is reportedly cooperating with federal prosecutors, and pleaded guilty to attempted robbery and gun charges.

Questions about Dmytryk's credibility as a witness are creating a familiar problem for District Attorney Seth Williams' office. Prosecutors are now sifting through, and sometimes fighting defense lawyers over, hundreds of cases tied to a growing roster of allegedly corrupt or abusive cops.

Dmytryk is quasi-anonymously identified in the indictment as police officer "S.D.," according to Zuckerman and the District Attorney's Office. That's because Dmytryk is not himself indicted. And, unlike the indicted officers, he is not accused of hanging anyone over an 18th-story balcony or viciously beating a suspect and stealing their cash.

But the federal grand jury did suggest that Dmytryk, a 19-year veteran of the force, intentionally lied on police paperwork to cover up a November 2011 theft carried out by indicted Officers Perry Betts and Brian Reynolds. This, too, would be a serious crime.

Dmytryk could not be reached for comment, but it isn't hard to discern his identity in the federal indictment: The facts match those of a 2011 drug-and-gun case against Center City barber Kenneth Mills (and are echoed in a federal civil lawsuit that Mills filed against Dmytryk and other officers).

Dmytryk is alleged to have falsely written that Officer Betts had "found only $1,950 in a dresser drawer" in a West Philadelphia home that police searched, omitting an "additional $4,050 in cash and [a] gold ring" that officers had stolen. The indictment further alleges that Dmytryk falsely charged Mills with possessing a gun when another person said they owned the gun, and had the paperwork to prove it.

"These officers are now charged in federal court with one of the largest and most deplorable police-corruption cases in the history of Philadelphia," Zuckerman wrote, referring to Liciardello and company. "If the information contained in the indictment is true, it means not only that Dmytryk lied in police paperwork, but that he also committed perjury when he testified in [Kenneth Mills'] preliminary hearing."

In the federal lawsuit, Mills also alleges that Dmytryk made false statements on search-warrant applications for his two properties, and that Dmytryk and other officers "knew or had reason to know of the falsity of these allegations."

Though Dmytryk has received far less attention than the officers who were charged, his predicament signals a larger problem for the Police Department and District Attorney — and for the drug war they carry out. Narcotics officers, long accused of lying, are faced, once again, with numerous credible accusations of perjury. The steady stream of corruption and abuse allegations poses a troubling question: Should judges and juries continue to give police testimony in these cases the benefit of the doubt?

"Unfortunately, these types of cases are not uncommon in Phila­del­phia," emails Zuckerman. "Often people are brought to trial on drug charges without any hard evidence to corroborate the claims of a single police officer. ... One must wonder how many people have been wrongfully convicted based on the word of a single officer's testimony."

*

It is unclear why Dmytryk has not been charged by federal prosecutors.

A joint FBI-Philadelphia Police task force investigating police corruption has refused to turn over information on Dmytryk's alleged misconduct, according to court records, apparently because of federal grand jury secrecy rules. Contacted for comment, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said that, as a general practice, "We don't confirm or deny the existence or non-existence of investigations."

The indictment's phrasing that "S.D." made false statements "to conceal the theft from authorities" suggests that they believe he did so knowingly.

But the District Attor­ney's Office insists that Dmy­tryk is a credible witness. And they have some reason to do so.
For one, the Police Department says that Dmytryk is not the subject of an Internal Affairs investigation. What's more, Assistant District Attorney Louis Tumolo presented Judge Brown with a letter from the U.S. Attorney's Office, which states that Dymytrk is not the subject of an investigation related to the Mills search and seizure. The U.S. Attorney sending such a letter, says First Assistant District Attorney Ed McCann, "is extremely unusual."

"Dmytryk is still testifying" in ongoing cases, Tumolo said in court. "It couldn't be more clear that he is not accused of any criminal wrongdoing."

But Gerard Deacon, a Philadelphia Police sergeant deputized as a federal agent on the task force, testified last September that he had knowledge of information substantiating the allegations against "S.D." but could not elaborate because of grand jury secrecy rules.

Dmytryk is also named in a number of other federal civil lawsuits, including two that accuse him of signing paperwork to secure warrants for allegedly bogus searches carried out by members of two groups of narcotics officers that have faced allegations including theft, perjury, drug dealing, assault and sexual assault.

Whether Dmytryk did wrong or spent too much time working alongside those who allegedly did, Dymtryk's testimony may turn radioactive for the DA as long as law enforcement refuses to explain exactly why his actions in the Mills case were not criminal.

In court, Zuckerman said that he has so far successfully persuaded Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Sean F. Kennedy and a second Common Pleas Court judge to bar the officer's testimony after the task force refused to turn over information on Dmytryk. Kennedy's order is under appeal.

According to the DA, a third judge rejected defense efforts.

*

Griffin was arrested "with shockingly little evidence," says Zuckerman. "There is no physical evidence that corroborates Dmytryk's claim that he saw Griffin sell drugs. Griffin had no drugs or pre-recorded buy money on him when arrested. He has no connection to the house where drugs were found. The sole evidence against him was a single officer (Dmytryk), who says that he saw Griffin sell drugs to a confidential informant on two occasions days prior to his arrest."

For his part, Griffin says when he was arrested in September 2013, he had no idea why he was being detained.

"First of all, they restrained my hands and I couldn't talk in sign language," Griffin said through an interpreter last month. "I was trying to nod my head and they were just talking to me and I didn't understand what was going on. It just went over my head. I didn't know what to say, so they just con­tinued talking. Their mouths were moving. ... I didn't understand the reason why I was being arrested."

Griffin says he was not provided with an interpreter at the police station or during a video-linked preliminary arraignment with a judge. He just stood there, comprehending nothing.

"I was trying to figure out how do I communicate?" he said. "And I need get in touch with my mom. I got to get in touch with my dad."
Finally, he says, an officer realized that he was deaf and called his mother, who took him home from jail.

"I don't blame cops in gener­al, but that cop should have known," says Griffin. "It's obvi­ous that I'm deaf ... It just seemed like he didn't want to com­municate. And all he did was talk and all I did was see mouths moving. And it really bothered me."