GARRISON – Anthony Grigoroff, the man twice convicted of murdering John Marcinak outside his Garrison Garage auto repair shop following a botched robbery on New Year’s Eve Day 2008, and who was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, will be getting a new trial now that the State Supreme Court Appellate Division has overturn the verdict.
In a four page decision, Judges Mark Dillon, William Ford, Laurence Love and James McCormack ruled that Grigoroff was “deprived of a fair trial since the sole evidence linking the defendant with the crime was his confession which he attempted to repudiate arguing that promises made by the police rendered his statements involuntary by creating a substantial risk that the defendant might falsely incriminate himself.”
The murder of Marcinak was one of Putnam’s most heinous crimes.
In 2010, Grigoroff of Lake Peekskill was convicted of murdering Marcinak. However, the State Supreme Court Appellate Division ruled in August 2015 that issues related to evidence regarding a separate shooting involving Grigoroff’s twin brother, as well as testimony from a witness who heard third hand that Grigoroff was involved, combined to prejudice the jury.
Testimony presented during the emotionally charged trial revealed that Grigoroff had allegedly planned to burglarize the Garrison Garage on Route 9 with his twin brother, Erick and 26-year-old friend Byron Mountain to get money in order to party in New York City. In a confession obtained after a 12-hour interrogation, Grigoroff told police he and his brother stayed in the car while Mountain cased the building. He told police Marcinak interrupted the burglary and Mountain shot him although during the trial he testified that the confession had been fabricated.
He was convicted of murder, criminal possession of a weapon and attempted burglary and was sentenced by the late Putnam County Judge James Reitz to 25 years to life for the murder charge, 15 years for the weapons charge and two seven-year terms for the burglary charges, all running concurrently.
The appeal alleged that the confession was ill-gotten. The court declined that portion of the appeal, but it did find evidence permitted at trial indicating that Erick Grigoroff was behind a shooting two months earlier was “highly prejudicial to the defendant,” and that testimony from a witness who overheard Erick Grigoroff say his brother was involved in the Garrison shooting qualified as hearsay.
In its latest decision, the Appellate Court judges wrote: “Contrary to the County Court’s conclusion, studies were relevant to illustrate the risk of false confessions and specifically a study related to mental disability is proper in this case where the defendant was found to have an IQ lower than 93 percent of individuals in this age group. Thus the court limited the scope of the expert’s testimony as to existing research on false confessions where that expert had previously testified that he could not effectively offer an opinion about the defendant’s psychological and vulnerabilities to falsely confessing. The error allowed the People’s expert to testify that research in the area of false confessions is scant.”
District Attorney Robert Tendy reacted to the high court’s ruling: “We have read the decision, and while we don’t agree with the legal analysis, we are bound by the decision and are already in the process of getting the case ready for re-trial.”
Following Grigoroff’s second conviction, John Marcinak’s widow, Janet, thanked Tendy for “doing a phenomenal job in the courtroom every day. We were confident that he would get a conviction a second time, but John is still gone. For the past nine years my children have suffered. They will always suffer from the loss of their father. No matter what happens to the defendant, John can never be replaced.”
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