SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Kenneth Thompson, the district attorney of Brooklyn, died this past Sunday from cancer. He was just 50 years old. Mr. Thompson was the first African-American DA for Brooklyn, elected in 2013. He immediately set up a unit to review old cases and determine whether defendants had been wrongfully convicted. We spoke with Kenneth Thompson a couple of years ago, and he described the challenges of this work.
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KENNETH THOMPSON: When I started in January, what surprised me is that I have over 500 prosecutors in my office and only two were assigned to review these wrongful conviction claims. I thought that that was ridiculous. So I went about to build a real conviction review unit. And now I have 10 prosecutors who no longer prosecute cases. They come to work every day and they focus on these cases. They review transcripts. They work closely with the team of investigators I've assigned to the unit.
And so it's a painstaking process, but it's critical for us to get this right because I must make sure that we do not release any murderers back into the community. And everyone who raises their hand and says that they were wrongfully convicted, they're not speaking the gospel.
SIMON: Are there police officers and prosecutors who might face criminal charges depending on what you find?
THOMPSON: Well, that's a possibility. But you have to keep in mind that many of these cases are 20 years old, and so it won't be easy to bring charges here because of statute of limitation issues and also because many of these witnesses have died. And so it's hard.
SIMON: Mr. Thompson, to go through this material, does that make you wonder if you have an office that has substantially changed in the 30 years that have gone by?
THOMPSON: I think the office has changed, just like Brooklyn has changed a lot. But one thing that should be constant, it should have been constant from day one, is the importance to do justice as a prosecutor. And so when I called Willie Stuckey's mother the other night to tell her that we were going to vacate his conviction, all I can hear on the other end of the phone was her crying hysterically because she said her son was actually 15 when he was arrested, not 16, and he lost his life in prison.
And to tell her that we were going to vacate his conviction was more than she could bear because she no longer has him. But hopefully now she has his good name back.
SIMON: Kenneth Thompson, the district attorney of Brooklyn, N.Y., thanks very much for being with us.
THOMPSON: Thank you so much.
SIMON: And Kenneth Thompson died this past Sunday at the age of 50 from cancer. The district attorney's office issued a statement saying, quote, "he transformed the office into a model urban prosecutor's office with a mandate to do justice and to treat everyone and every case fairly and with the utmost integrity." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
