"Terrel Banks, 26, was arrested months after his 20th birthday for the October 2008 fatal shooting of 21-year-old Timothy Smith in Fresh Meadows. Banks lingered behind bars and faced trial three times...

The case against Banks had been rocky from the start as the prosecution's star witness changed her testimony that she saw Banks shoot Smith before the first trial in 2010. [Queens DA] earned Lasak's approval to use the woman's grand jury testimony identifying Banks in [the three] subsequent trials"— all of which ended in mistrials, because three different juries refused to convict Terrel Banks.

Banks’ third and final trial ended in March 2014 with a hung jury. After that, prosecutors made a last-ditch effort with a plea deal, agreeing to drop the murder charge if Banks copped to criminal possession of a weapon.

Banks refused to admit guilt to something he did not do, his lawyer Jorge Santos said. “He said, ‘I’m innocent I’m not taking it, I don’t care. I’m not admitting to having a gun, I didn’t do anything,’ ” Santos said.

He was finally released after spending 6 years in Rikers Island. 

"In a curious gesture, Judge Gregory Lasak, instead of apologizing for his time in prison for a crime he did not commit, he suggested that Banks, “thank the district attorneys for dismissing the charges.”

Banks said “The heartache, the stress, the pain, the anguish. . . the police don’t know what you go through. The district attorney don’t know what you go through. The judge don’t know what you go through. It was a bad experience that nobody should have to go through.”