On February 21, 2017, New York City police detective Joseph Franco arrested 46-year-old Julio Irizarry after Franco reported that he saw Irizarry sell drugs to an unidentified man inside the lobby of a building at 288 Delancey Street in Manhattan. On June 28, 2017, Irizarry pled guilty in New York County Supreme Court to criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree. He was sentenced three years in prison to be served concurrently with a five-year sentence that was imposed in a separate unrelated drug case.
In 2018, Franco came under investigation by the New York County District Attorney’s Office after video from a surveillance camera in the lobby showed that on the afternoon of his arrest, Irizarry entered 288 Delancey Street, went upstairs to another floor, then came back down and left the building in less than a minute.
There was no drug sale in the lobby. In addition, video from outside the building showed that after Irizarry went inside, Franco walked straight past the building without going near the entrance, making it impossible for the Franco to have seen anything inside the lobby.
On December 5, 2018, after an investigation by the New York County District Attorney’s Office, prosecutors asked that Irizarry’s conviction be vacated and the charges were dismissed. The prosecution also agreed to reduce Irizarry’s separate five-year sentence to 3.5 years.
In April 2019, Franco was indicted on 16 counts, including perjury and official misconduct for framing Irizarry and two other people— Turrell Irving and Tameeka Baker. The charges against Franco were dismissed by a judge in 2023, after he found that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence to Franco's attorneys. – Maurice Possley
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