Keith Roberts (Photo: Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News) At about 4 a.m. on September 21, 1986, 28-year-old Pierre Sanon was fatally shot outside a club on Church Avenue between East 55th Street and East 54th Street in Brooklyn, New York.
A witness said that Sanon was shot in the back while he was being chased down Church Avenue. When he got to the Holiday Social Club at 5413 Church Avenue, he tried to get in. The gunman caught up to him and fired a fatal shot in his forehead.
The police investigation lasted less than one day and culminated with the arrest of 29-year-old Keith Roberts later that afternoon. The police targeted Roberts based on a statement from Jerome Pierre, who said he saw the shooting. Pierre said that after the shooting, the gunman, who Pierre said had a mustache, went into a yellow house on East 55th Street. When police went to the house, they found Roberts.
Roberts, who did not have a mustache, told police he went to a party next door to his home until about 12:15 a.m. and then went to a club at Linden Boulevard and Montauk Street with two young women. He said they left the club at 5:30 a.m. He drove the women home and then arrived at home around 7 a.m. He said he had last shaved on September 20.
After Pierre identified Roberts in a lineup, Roberts, a native of Guyana, was charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
On September 22, Roberts’s wife, Sandra, gave a statement to police saying that on the night of the crime, she arrived home from work between midnight and 12:30 a.m. Robert asked to take the car to see his mother. He left at about 1 a.m. and returned home at about 6:30 a.m. She said he brought food from the party next door.
On September 2, 1987, Roberts went to trial in Kings County Supreme Court. The following day, the prosecution turned over an audio-taped statement from Eleanor Chapman, which Chapman had given in the hours after the shooting. Chapman said that the gunman fled in a car, contradicting Pierre’s claim that the gunman went into the yellow house. She said she did not see the shooter’s face.
Pierre testified and identified Roberts as the gunman, though his testimony conflicted with some of his earlier statements to police. He claimed that Roberts must have shaved off his mustache right after the shooting. He admitted that he had said the gunman was Jamaican.
Two .32-caliber shell casings were recovered at the scene and two .32-caliber bullets were found in Sanon’s body, but the murder weapon was never recovered.
At the conclusion of the prosecution’s evidence, the defense asked that the case be dismissed as a sanction for the prosecution’s untimely disclosure of the statement from Chapman. The judge denied that motion, but allowed the defense to call the prosecutor who took the statement from Chapman, because Chapman could not be located.
The prosecutor testified that Chapman was standing on the street when she saw two men talking. One turned and fired two shots, then tossed a set of keys to the other man. Both got into a car and drove off. The prosecutor said Chapman was high at the time and that Chapman said she could not make an identification.
Roberts testified and denied involvement in the shooting. He repeated his account of his whereabouts in the hours before and after the shooting. He said he was always clean-shaven. He named several people who had seen him during the night.
Cheryl Burke testified that she had a birthday party at her home next door to Roberts, but that she did not recall seeing him there. She said she heard that a murder had occurred nearby and went to investigate. She said she returned home about 7 a.m. and saw Roberts arriving at home.
Fred Fleary testified that he was at Burke’s party and saw Roberts there around 1 or 2 a.m. He did not have a mustache, Fleary said.
Christine Martin testified she was at Dawn Dennis’s house at about 12:30 a.m. when Roberts and a male friend arrived. She said Roberts did not have a mustache. After driving his friend home, Roberts returned and picked up Martin and Dennis, and also picked up Roberts’s cousin. All four then went to a nightclub called the Village Hut. They arrived at 2 am, and left together at 5:20 a.m. On the way home, they slowed down as they passed the scene of the shooting, but did not stop. Martin said Roberts dropped her and Dennis off at 6 a.m.
Roger Maddison testified that he was standing outside the Village Hut at 4:30 a.m. when Roberts and two women came out. Maddison said he had known Roberts for about five years. He said Roberts did not have a mustache or any facial hair.
On September 15, 1987, Roberts was convicted of second-degree murder. At a hearing on October 6, 1987, before sentence was imposed, Roberts maintained his innocence. He said that numerous people had come forward to say that a friend of Pierre’s had blood all over his shirt after the shooting. The prosecution noted that none of them were eyewitnesses to the shooting. The judge said that the defense could have called them. Roberts was then sentenced to 18 years to life in prison.
In January 1994, Roberts filed a motion to vacate his conviction based on evidence that Chapman and another witness, Aunya Johnson, had both witnessed the shooting, and both agreed that Roberts was not the gunman. Chapman, who had previously said she had not seen the shooter’s face, now said that Roberts was too dark, too small, and did not have enough hair to have been the gunman. Johnson said the gunman was Jamaican, and that Roberts was not the gunman.
On April 25, 1994, the Appellate Division vacated Roberts’s conviction. The court ruled that the belated disclosure of Chapman’s statement was a violation of Brady v. Maryland, which requires the prosecution to disclose exculpatory evidence. Chapman’s statement “obviously has a direct bearing” on Pierre’s credibility, the court said.
A week later, Roberts was released on bond. In May 1995, the trial court ruled that Roberts’s motion to vacate his conviction was mooted by the reversal ruling.
On September 27, 1995, Roberts agreed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of first-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to two and one-third to seven years and immediately released with credit for time served.
In November 2022, Roberts, assisted by Leonard Noisette, who was Roberts’s lawyer during his appeal and later proceedings, wrote to the Conviction Review Unit (CRU) of the King’s County District Attorney’s Office, asking the unit to re-investigate the case.
“There is hardly a day that I do not regret pleading guilty to a crime I did not commit,” Roberts said. “Avoiding the risk of losing again at trial and returning to prison seems less worth it in hindsight and sparing my mother and champion during my incarceration of that hardship brought its own pain and consequences. My life since has been hard and filled with much loss. I promised my mother before she died that I would continue to fight to establish my innocence and honor her fight and sacrifice to free me and clear my name.”
In the request for a re-investigation, Roberts noted: “We also located Kelric Hinds, a witness trial counsel was aware of prior to trial but had not attempted to find. Hinds told us he had seen the shooting from across the street, provided a description of the killer that did not match me, and claimed he had viewed a line-up in which the shooter was not present (The prosecution contended that Jerome Pierre was the only person to view a line-up.).”
Roberts told the CRU that through a public records request, he had received a list of names of possible suspects or persons with knowledge of the killing that Henry Sanon, the victim’s brother, had provided to police after the shooting. Robert said that in July 1995, prior to the date set for his retrial, the prosecutor and Noisette interviewed Henry Sanon, who confirmed that he had provided a list of names of possible suspects and people with knowledge of the crime to the police. Henry Sanon said his brother told him about a week before the killing that he had a dispute with Jerome Pierre. Moreover, Henry described a conversation with Jerome Pierre about seven months after the killing during which Pierre admitted fighting with the victim the night he was shot, although Pierre denied shooting the victim.
On October 3, 2024, Kings County District Attorney Eric Gonzalez appeared in court and asked that Roberts’s conviction be vacated. The motion was granted, and the case was dismissed.
In a 43-page report, the CRU said that its re-investigation of the case established “there is a reasonable probability that defendant is innocent and that the account of the sole eyewitness [Pierre], who testified at trial…was patently incredible. Furthermore, the defendant’s alibi was plausible. In addition, had the police conducted a thorough investigation, defendant might not have been arrested.”
One witness reported that on the night of the murder, Sanon had gone to the club to see a woman who waited tables there. On the night of the murder, Sanon was drunk and fought with another man who also was interested in the waitress. During the fight, Pierre joined in to help beat up Sanon, the witness said. Sanon was thrown out of the club, returned, and was thrown out again. Shortly after that, he was shot.
The report noted that the lead investigator said that after Roberts was arrested, no further investigation was done. “It was all about numbers, clearing cases,” the investigator told the CRU. The investigator recalled that when people began calling to say that Roberts was not the shooter, she reported the calls to her superior, who told her that “the case was closed. Period.”
In a statement, Gonzalez said, “This exoneration underscores the critical importance of our Conviction Review Unit and its mission to right the wrongs of the past. Mr. Roberts, like many others, found himself trapped by a system that failed to recognize his innocence, and nearly 20 years ago, he pleaded guilty just to stay out of prison. Our reinvestigation revealed the deep flaws in the original case—unreliable testimony, overlooked evidence, and a rushed investigation.”
– Maurice Possley
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