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NEW YORK, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- A man wrongly convicted of killing his mother and sister who has struck a deal to receive a $3.6 million settlement from New York State is suing New York City. Anthony Yarbough, 40, and a co-defendant, Shariff Wilson, were released last year. Wilson, 38, died in January of health problems his lawyers said were partly caused by spending his adult life in prison.
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The lawsuit names the city and individual police officers as defendants.
In a complaint filed in federal court, Yarbough said he and Wilson were subjected to brutal interrogations by Brooklyn homicide detectives until they confessed. Yarbough's lawyers said Wilson, then 15, was slapped.
The detectives allegedly ridiculed Yarbough after he acknowledged he is gay, the complaint said.
"One of the detectives slammed down a Polaroid picture of Antonio's murdered mother's mutilated corpse, and at the same time, said, 'You did this. Only a f----t would do this,'" lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma wrote.
Yarbough was 18 when he called police to report he had found the bodies of his mother, his 12-year-old sister and a friend in the family's apartment in a Coney Island housing project. His mother and the two girls had been strangled.
Wilson testified against Yarbough but later recanted his story and confession.
"Other than Sharrif's false testimony and Antonio's false confession, no evidence of any kind linked Antonio to the murders," the complaint said.
In 2013, DNA from material found under the mother's fingernails was linked to DNA evidence in a 1999 killing. At that time, both Yarbough and Wilson were in prison.
New York has recently agreed to pay millions of dollars in settlements with people who were wrongly convicted of murder, many of them prosecuted by the office of former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. The current district attorney, Kenneth Thompson, has set up a unit to review questionable convictions.
