A New York City man who spent seventeen years in jail for murder before being exonerated last year landed back in prison on Tuesday — for groping a woman and packing an illegal gun, according to police sources.
The 39-year-old Brooklyn man, James Davis, who was convicted in the 2004 fatal shooting of a man at a Brooklyn party before he was cleared and released in 2021 — was apprehended by cops in Manhattan on Tuesday after he reportedly grabbed a woman’s buttocks — and was found to also have an illicit, loaded Ruger .380-caliber handgun on him, The New York Post reported.
Davis was 21 when he was charged with killing Blake Harper in 2004 in a beef over a woman during a party at a Masonic lodge.
Davis claimed he left the party before the shooting happened. However, a woman at the party identified him as the gunman, WPIX TV said in a report after his release last year. Three other witnesses also picked Davis out of a lineup, and he was convicted two years later.
Davis’ legal team sought to overturn the conviction, claiming he just bore a resemblance to the actual shooter and that his first lawyer failed to interview other witnesses who could have cleared him in the case.
In April 2021, they won their bid, and Davis was released, with the Brooklyn DA’s Office eventually saying he would not be retried.
After being freed, Davis appears to have kept his hands clean until Tuesday, when cops say he was walking near 34th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan around 9:20 a.m. when he allegedly grabbed the woman, the sources said.
When cops searched him, Davis was carrying the loaded gun, they said.
Davis is currently facing at least two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one count of criminal possession of a controlled substance, police sources said.
