A Rochester man who served 37 years in state prison before having his murder conviction thrown out is now suing, seeking $200 million in damages from police and prosecutors he blames for his wrongful conviction.
The federal complaint, filed Tuesday, alleged the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office and Rochester Police Department conspired to frame Michael Rhynes for a double homicide.
Rhynes’ 2023 release from the Attica Correctional Facility first was reported by the Democrat & Chronicle.
On the evening of Sept. 27, 1984, three masked gunmen entered Rico’s Bar on Lexington Avenue in an attempted armed robbery. The gunmen reportedly demanded Enrico Ferrari, the bar’s owner, open a safe, which he refused to do. The gunmen opened fire, killing Ferrari and another man, Robert Hurysz. The shooters fled empty-handed.
Rhynes, in court filings, claimed that he was asleep in his mother’s apartment above the bar at the time of the shooting. He was convicted in 1986.
The complaint alleges that, after no witnesses could positively identify the shooters, RPD Lt. William Mayer directed a confidential informant to implicate Rhynes in the shooting.
The informant allegedly was fed information about Rhynes by Mayer and officers under his direction -- including a story of meeting with three men earlier in September who discussed robbing Rico’s Bar.
The complaint alleges that claim, as well as similar collusion among the District Attorney’s Office and Police Department to implicate Rhynes, led to his 1986 conviction.
Rhynes was sentenced to 52 years to life in prison. He was 25 at the time.
“There was no other evidence pointing to him: no eyewitnesses, no admissions or confessions, no forensic evidence, and no video footage,” the complaint reads.
Several other witnesses who testified that they saw Rhynes take part in the shooting later recanted their testimonies.
While District Attorney Ray Cornelius initially had intended to call for the case to be dismissed, two jailhouse letters from men who had been in the Monroe County Jail with Rhynes claimed he confessed to them.
One of the men, Joe Smith, admitted during a 2023 court hearing that he had written the letter after reading about Rhynes' case in a newspaper in the prison library, and had sought a reduced sentence for providing information. Both men testified that they had lied about Rhynes’s involvement in the shooting.
“However immoral, they had significant motive to lie at the trial in 1986, they have no reason to do so now, their only motive being to each clear their respective consciences,” state Supreme Court Judge Stephen Miller wrote in his 2023 decision.
Miller ruled that, after throwing out the men’s testimonies, there was little evidence to convict Rhynes, and vacated the judgment.
Rhynes’ prison term is the second longest ever served for a wrongful conviction in New York. Leonard Mack is the longest, serving 48 years for rape and criminal possession of a weapon, before being exonerated in 2023 through DNA evidence.
Rhynes is suing on 11 counts, including false imprisonment, negligence, and civil rights conspiracy. His lawsuit, seeking compensatory and punitive damages, also names the estates of a slew of deceased Rochester police officers.
