Convicted of killing a Hasidic rabbi, a New York man was freed Thursday after being wrongly jailed for 23 years.
David Ranta, 58, was arrested in 1990 for the murder of ultra-orthodox Brooklyn rabbi Chaskel Werzberger. He was convicted and sentenced to 37 years in jail.
The killing of rabbi Werzberger, a holocaust survivor, spurred demands in the Hasidic Jewish community for quick justice. The Rabbi's funeral was attended by thousands of people.
Judge Miriam Cyrulnik of State Supreme Court termed his imprisonment as "miscarriage of justice."
"To say that I'm sorry for what you have endured will be an understatement and grossly inadequate, but I say it to you anyway," Justice Cyrulnik told Ranta. "Sir, you are a free man."
ABC News reported that since the beginning, Ranta asserted he was innocent. Investigators said detectives falsely claimed they took statements from Ranta and an eyewitness were instructed to pick Ranta from a police line up.
Rata was locked up in a 6-by-9 foot cell near Buffalo and at the time of arrest, his daughter was two years old. She was six months pregnant with his grandchild, on Thursday.
After his release Ranta said he was "overwhelmed."
"I feel like I'm under water, swimming," he told reporters. "As I said from the beginning, I had nothing to do with this case."
