A Queens man who has spent more than 40 years in prison after hurling a hand grenade at cops was just cleared of the charges by a state appeals court \u2014 because the device was a dud.<\/p>\n
Supreme Court Judge Gia Morris ruled last week that Michael Bossett, 68 \u2014 who was found guilty of five counts of attempted murder of a police officer in 1981 \u2014 knew the projectile didn\u2019t pack any explosives and therefore never intended to kill the cops, as prosecutors argued.<\/p>\n
Now Bossett is set to go before a state parole board, where he has a chance of being freed.<\/p>\n
Suspect Michael Bossett was shot and wounded in 1980 after throwing a hand grenade at cops in Queens. New York Post<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though it has taken almost 45 years for justice to prevail, Mr. Bossett never lost hope that his wrongful conviction would be overturned,\u201d his lawyer, Ron Kuby, told The Post. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe case is a remnant of the bad old days of policing, where cops and prosecutors would base cases on a \u2018if he didn\u2019t do this, he did something else\u201d philosophy that ruined the lives of so many innocent people,\u201d Kuby added.<\/p>\n
But the judge\u2019s ruling Thursday doesn\u2019t mean Bossett is out of the woods.<\/p>\n
The accused onetime gangbanger still faces a murder conviction on Long Island.<\/p>\n
Hero cop Gabriel Vitale was fatally shot by Michael Bossett\u2019s brother in 1980. NYPD 109th Precinct<\/p>\n
He is behind bars for the slaying,\u00a0 but now that the grenade charge has been tossed, he\u2019s facing a combined sentence of 37 1\/2 years to life instead of 50 years to life \u2014 and he\u2019s served nearly 45 years already.<\/p>\n
Still, he also has\u00a0been linked to the shooting death of another of New York\u2019s Finest just hours before the 1980 grenade fiasco.<\/p>\n
Bossett\u2019s brother, 69-year-old Darrell Bossett, is serving a life sentence for the cowardly 1980 shooting death of NYPD veteran Gabriel Vitale, 42, who died nine days after being gunned down while investigating a burglary in Queens.<\/p>\n
Although Michael Bossett, who was with his brother at the time of the shooting, wasn\u2019t convicted in the case, Vitale\u2019s family still holds him equally accountable and calls the decision to throw out the attempted-murder grenade charges a fiasco.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s even worse that this criminal will now be unjustly eligible for parole,\u201d said Cyndy Vitale, the slain cop\u2019s daughter, to The Post in a statement. \u201cI grew up with many line-of-duty families, bonding over our shared experience in losing a hero father.<\/p>\n
NYPD officers flood a Queens courthouse to block Michael Bossett\u2019s attempts to have his conviction tossed. NYC Police Benevolent Association<\/p>\n
PBA President Patrick Hendry said the fight to keep career criminal Michael Bossett locked up is far from over. James Keivom<\/p>\n
\u201cNow so many of those killers are being set free to spend time with their families, while we were robbed of time with our fathers,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s appalling how the courts and parole system prioritize the rights of criminals over justice for the victims. It\u2019s a complete moral failure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cyndy Vitale and the NYPD Police Benevolent Association are also furious that Bossett\u2019s key witness at the grenade hearing was a childhood friend \u2014 and an ex-cop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is absolutely shameful that the court would credit the far-fetched, self-serving tales being spun on the witness stand and ignore the simple fact that this drug-dealing murderer tried to kill New York City police officers,\u201d PBA President Patrick Hendry said in a statement. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis fight isn\u2019t over,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to stand with P.O. Vitale\u2019s family to ensure that both of the individuals connected with his murder stay behind bars for life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Darrell Bossett was convicted of murder in the 1980 shooting death of NYPD veteran Vitale. New York Post<\/p>\n
Michael Bossett, then a reputed gang member, had his Queens apartment raided by cops Dec. 15, 1980.<\/p>\n
According to court records, Bossett, who was 24 at the time, jumped out with a gun and hurled the hand grenade at the officers, who opened fire and wounded the career criminal.<\/p>\n
In last week\u2019s ruling, Morris said Bossett had previously thrown the inactive grenade at a friend and knew at the time of the incident with cops that it posed no danger.<\/p>\n
Bossett still has drug and weapons-possession charges against him in the grenade incident and is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for a separate fatal shooting in Suffolk County.<\/p>\n
Civil-rights lawyer Ron Kuby said Michael Bossett has paid for his crimes after more than 40 years behind bars. Paul Martinka<\/p>\n
In that case, he was convicted in February 1983 in the gang-related shooting death of Donald \u201cRommel\u201d McGirth, whose body was found handcuffed and tossed in the woods along a Long Island highway on Aug. 30, 1980 \u2014 a few months before the grenade incident \u2014 in what prosecutors described as a drug dispute.<\/p>\n
A rep for the Queens District Attorney\u2019s Office said the judge\u2019s ruling in the grenade case only means Bossett is now facing a combined sentence of 37 1\/2 years to life, instead of the 50 years to life he had been facing.<\/p>\n
But Kuby maintained that his client has more than served his time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has paid for that crime and would have been paroled 20 years ago, but for the wrongful conviction,\u201d he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Queens man who has spent more than 40 years in prison after hurling a hand grenade at…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":63184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,45186,8142,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5257,17049,4413,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969,45187],"class_list":{"0":"post-63183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-appeals","10":"tag-justice","11":"tag-metro","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-nypd","19":"tag-police-investigations","20":"tag-queens","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-us-news","27":"tag-usa","28":"tag-wrongful-convictions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114848001220526748","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}