Carl Miller served 30 years in jail after being convicted in 1980 0f murdering Rabbi David Okunov in Brooklyn. This week, a choose vacated his conviction, saying that Miller “is definitely harmless” of the crime.
The ruling signifies that Okunov’s homicide, which shocked New York on the time, is unlikely ever to be solved. The rabbi, who had moved to the US from the Soviet Union three years earlier, was killed whereas strolling to morning prayer companies in Crown Heights. He was robbed of his prayer scarf and tefillin.
Miller, who was 19 on the time, all the time maintained his innocence, and his conviction got here as New York Metropolis’s homicide price peaked, with greater than seven occasions as many killings per yr than immediately. In recent times, revelations that convictions from the period had been primarily based on coerced confessions or falsified proof has led to the exoneration of dozens of individuals in Brooklyn alone. The choose’s declaration that Miller is harmless, somewhat than falsely convicted, meets a better authorized commonplace.
Okunov’s homicide got here amid rising tensions in Crown Heights, residence to each a big Black neighborhood and the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch motion of Judaism. 1000’s of Hasidic Orthodox Jews attended Okunov’s funeral procession because it moved by means of the streets of the neighborhood, and the motion’s chief, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, reportedly cried as he spoke at Okunov’s funeral. The 2 males had identified one another in Russia within the early twentieth century, and Okunov remained a Chabad adherent even when doing so was trigger for arrest within the Soviet Union.
“It’s significantly tragic {that a} man who got here right here to benefit from the free follow of his faith, who labored arduous for his fellow immigrants, must be so wantonly and senselessly reduce down,” Gov. Hugh Carey mentioned on the time. “We will solely hope that the reminiscence of his life, of his battle for freedom and justice and mercy, might be cherished by each New Yorker.”
Schneerson known as on his followers to construct a college in Okunov’s reminiscence. The college, a part of Chabad’s largest yeshiva in Crown Heights, centered on educating boys from the Soviet Union who had not had entry to Jewish schooling there.
A company that Okunov was concerned in, Pals of Refugees in Jap Europe or FREE, continues to offer companies in Crown Heights. Its affiliated synagogue held a kiddush in October to mark the forty sixth anniversary of Okunov’s killing.
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