Gregory Lasak, as a judge, permitted the Queens DA to use recanted eye witness testimony (repudiated prior statement) as evidence in, not one, not two but, three murder trials of an innocent African American man.
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. The Queens DA got 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.
Banks was finally released after spending 6 years in Rikers Island for a crime he did not commit.
On April 29, 2015, former judge Gregory Lasak, and now "progressive prosecutor," instead of apologizing for keeping him in Rikers for 6 years for a crime he did not commit, suggested that Banks, “thank the district attorneys for dismissing the charges.”