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February 12, 1999, Friday

Metropolitan Desk

     

Jury Clears Man Accused of Confessing to Teacher's Slaying

By DAVID ROHDE 

A Manhattan jury acquitted a 27-year-old Brooklyn man yesterday of all charges in the May 1997 torture and slaying of a popular Bronx public high school teacher. The jurors criticized the aggressive police tactics used in the case, saying they could not trust a confession made by the defendant, Montoun T. Hart, because detectives questioned him when he was drunk and high on marijuana.

An ebullient Mr. Hart, who said he had been threatened with a death sentence and pressured into falsely confessing, jumped up and down and hugged his lawyer as the jury forewoman pronounced him not guilty of second-degree murder and robbery in the death of the teacher, Jonathan M. Levin, 31.

Carol Levin, the victim's mother, sat stunned in the second row of the courtroom as the verdict was read. Mr. Hart, the second defendant tried in the slaying, turned to Ms. Levin before leaving the courthouse a free man after nearly two years in jail.

''I'm sorry, ma'am, for your son, but I did not do this crime,'' Mr. Hart said, his hands clasped in front of his heart. ''I swear to God. I swear to God. God bless you.''

Moments later, an ashen Ms. Levin, who attended every day of Mr. Hart's four-week trial, told reporters that she did not know what to believe. ''I hope for the sake of Jonathan and for the sake of society that he was telling the truth,'' she said.

With yesterday's verdict, both young men accused of torturing and killing Mr. Levin for his bank card access code escaped the punishment prosecutors sought. In November, a Manhattan jury acquitted Corey Arthur, a former student of Mr. Levin's at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx, of first-degree murder, saying the evidence failed to prove that Mr. Arthur fired the fatal shot in Mr. Levin's Upper West Side apartment. Mr. Arthur, 20, who faced life in prison without parole for a first-degree conviction, was convicted of the lesser charge of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

The slaying of Mr. Levin, the son of the chairman of Time Warner, Gerald Levin, prompted one of the most intense police investigations in New York City in recent years, involving 60 detectives.

Mr. Arthur, who left his name on the slain teacher's answering machine on the day of the murder, quickly became the prime suspect. After his girlfriend told the police she had seen him and Mr. Hart together that day, detectives decided to question Mr. Hart.

In his testimony, Mr. Hart, whose only previous conviction was for shoplifting in Pennsylvania nine years ago, admitted that he and Mr. Arthur were together earlier on the day of the slaying. He said Mr. Arthur, whom he did not know well, tricked him out of $200 when he tried to buy marijuana from him that morning, but said that he did not see Mr. Arthur again that day.

With no fingerprints or DNA from Mr. Hart found in the English teacher's apartment, jurors said the key piece of evidence against him was a confession Detectives Anthony Vasquez and John Taglioni obtained during a 3 to 9:30 A.M. interrogation a week after the killing. Other detectives confirmed that they picked up Mr. Hart for questioning as he pulled into his driveway in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, returning home from a party. Mr. Hart was so drunk that his pants fell down and he dropped his keys when he got out of the car.

Mr. Hart, who took the witness stand in his own defense, testified that Detectives Vasquez and Taglioni threatened him with the death penalty if he did not confess to being present at Mr. Levin's slaying. At a news conference after his acquittal, a visibly stunned Mr. Hart and his weeping mother assailed the detectives' conduct.

''A total injustice is the word for the way they treated me,'' Mr. Hart said.

Five jurors, who spoke to a reporter after the verdict on the condition of anonymity, said they were unsure whether Mr. Hart played a role in the slaying. One said that his claim of a forced confession sounded ''fishy,'' but they agreed that the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

''A lot of us thought he might have been there,'' one juror said. ''Some thought Corey Arthur might have done it himself. But we all agreed they didn't prove their case.''

The detectives testified that the confession was genuine, but the jurors said they could not base a conviction on Mr. Hart's statements to the police because the panel felt the confession was ''improperly obtained.''

The jurors said that police photographs taken of Mr. Hart the night he was questioned sealed their decision. ''He just looked wasted,'' said one juror. ''We had already made our decision, but that clinched it. He was either high or drunk or both.''  

The only other evidence linking Mr. Hart to the slaying was a witness who said he saw Mr. Hart at a nearby automated teller machine that afternoon. But the jurors said they could not rely on that because the police waited until eight months after the killing to have the witness view Mr. Hart in a lineup. ''We didn't believe that eight months later he knew what he looked like,'' a juror said.

Throughout the trial, Mr. Hart's defense lawyer, David Stern, attacked the police for failing to do basic police work in the case that could have definitively implicated or exonerated Mr. Hart. Mr. Stern criticized Detectives Vasquez and Taglioni for not videotaping Mr. Hart's statements, which might have shown his state of mind at the time.

The jurors also complained about the police work, questioning why a juice bottle found in the hall outside Mr. Levin's apartment that Mr. Hart told the police that he drank from was checked for fingerprints, but not DNA. They also questioned why the police never searched Mr. Hart's house and car for evidence.

Sgt. Ellen Tietjan, a Police Department spokeswoman, said she had no comment on the case. But law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity defended the investigation and said that they did not, for example, have probable cause to search Mr. Hart's home and car.

Mr. Stern scoffed at that explanation and blamed ''arrogance'' on the part of the detectives for the lack of further investigation. ''They turned over every stone,'' he said after the verdict. ''Except for the ones that could have shown if he was guilty or not guilty.''

He also said the case was an example of police misconduct in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. ''The public should be aware that the police interaction with middle-class people is very different than with poor people,'' he said.

For Mr. Hart, a day that began with the chilling prospect of spending 25 years to life in prison ended in tears and giddy laughter in front of a battery of television cameras in his lawyer's office.

Flanked by his mother, who testified that she tried to block the police from questioning her son that night, and his father, who flew to New York from Texas for the trial, Mr. Hart repeatedly thanked his lawyer, the jury, the judge, the judicial system and most of all, God, for the stunning turn of events. He said he planned to celebrate his first night of freedom by drinking a bottle of champagne, playing video games and seeing his son Travon, who turned 4 on Sunday. ''I've become a new person with these two years in jail for something I didn't do,'' he said. ''I'm going to watch the way I walk. I'm going to watch the way I talk. The only thing I'm going to do is follow God. God knew I didn't do it, and He brought me home.''