A white New York judge admitted that his personal racial bias may have influenced his decision to convict a white defendant for murdering a black man 15 years ago.
In 1999, then Supreme Court Judge Frank Barbaro found Donald Kagan guilty of second-degree murder for the shooting death of a black man in a movie theater the year before, CNN reported.
Barbaro, who has a reputation for being a strong supporter of civil rights, said his decision to convict has taunted him all these years.
"I couldn't get out of my mind the look on the lawyer's face when I said I found him guilty. And the defendant on the stand, like he was pleading to me, 'It just happened, it just happened,' and that was sort of haunting me," Barbaro told CNN earlier this year.
Kagan, who is now 39, may have his 15 years-to-life sentence overturned. Judge ShawnDya L. Simpson is expected to rule on Thursday whether to uphold Barbaro's decision or to release Kagan.
At his trial Kagan testified he shot 23-year-old Wavell Wint during an altercation at a movie theatre in Brooklyn in 1998. Wint was acting hostile towards other people before getting into a confrontation with Kagan, according to trial records obtained by CNN.
The two argued, a clash ensued and Kagan shot Wint, claiming he was scared of him and that it was in self-defense. Wint was unarmed.
Barbaro said at the time he had no doubt in his mind that Kagan was racist when he issued the verdict. But a few years later he began to wonder if he truly considered all of the evidence presented at the trial.
"I think I made a mistake," Barabaro told Kagan's lawyer in 2011 before requesting a transcript of the trial.
Barbaro realized that in his efforts to uphold racial equality, he did not consider if Kagan thought his life was in immediate danger, he told CNN.
Kagan's defense attorney filed a motion to overturn the verdict. Simpson, who presided over a Dec. 2013 hearing about the motion, was supposed have already issued a decision but postponed it twice.
Sources with knowledge of the case told CNN that Simpson might postpone her decision a third time.
