At about 1 a.m. on August 29, 1993, Emmanuel Felix was shot to death on Amsterdam Avenue, between 135th Street and 136th Street in Manhattan, New York.
Felix, who was 6 feet tall and 23 years old, was shot once in the right temple. The doctor who performed the autopsy reported that the bullet traveled downward through Emmanuel’s skull.
Officers with the New York Police Department canvassed the area but did not find any witnesses. At the time of his death, Felix was awaiting sentencing on a drug-related conviction.
At 3 a.m. on September 2, the mother of 13-year-old A.A. called the police, claiming that someone had banged on their apartment door, demanding to be let in. She said other men were in the hallway and coming into her building, which was a few blocks from the scene of the shooting.
When the police arrived, A.A.’s mother said the presence of these men had something to do with A.A. witnessing Felix’s murder. The police interviewed A.A. She said that she had been playing outside at the time of the murder with two girlfriends, C.A. and M.M. She said she heard a shot and then saw a man running behind her, holding a black pistol. She described him as about 21 years old, approximately 4 feet 11” tall with a medium build, and wearing a black vest, black jeans, and a baseball cap.
A.A. said she saw the man run into an apartment building at 509 W. 135th Street. A.A. said in her statement that she knew the man as Harry, and that he lived at 504 W. 135th Street.
Later that day, A.A. gave a statement to a detective. She again described the incident and said that a few minutes after the shooting, she saw Harry out on the street, asking “who got shot?” Later, A.A. said, she saw Harry go into his apartment building and then return, this time wearing a white shirt rather than the vest. Neither C.A. nor M.M gave a statement to the police, who determined that Harry was 24-year-old Harry Ruiz.
The police picked up Ruiz on June 9, 1994, near his apartment. At the time, he was wearing a black vest with no shirt and a baseball cap. Available court records don’t indicate the reasons for the nine-month gap between A.A.’s statement and Ruiz’s arrest.
At the police station, Ruiz gave a statement that he was at home at the time of the murder. He said he heard shots, looked out his window, and saw people running toward Amsterdam Avenue on 135th Street. Ruiz said he went down to the crime scene and stayed there for about 20 minutes. He said that as he was returning to his building, he ran into a woman named Janet Dominguez, who lived across the street. Ruiz said that Dominguez told him that the shooter ran into her while fleeing the scene and that she got a good look at him. Dominguez said the shooter was about the same size as Ruiz, who was also about 5 feet tall and known on the street as “Little Harry.”
After giving his statement, Ruiz was placed in a lineup, where A.A. identified him as the shooter. Ruiz was arrested, and a grand jury later indicted him on second-degree murder and two weapons charges.
Ruiz’s jury trial in New York County Supreme Court began on November 7, 1994, with Justice Alfred Kleiman presiding. A.A. was the only witness to identify Ruiz. Initially, when the prosecutor asked A.A. to identify the shooter, the girl picked out a man in the back of the courtroom. She then testified that the man “looks like Harry” and identified Ruiz, sitting at the defense table, as the shooter. A.A. first testified that she had known Ruiz for a year and had seen him “several times.” Later, she testified that she saw him in the neighborhood about twice a week.
A.A. said that she, C.A., and M.M. had gone to a birthday party on August 28 and taken the subway back to their neighborhood. She said they exited the station and began walking home. She said she saw Felix, whom she described as a “good friend,” on 136th Street. At the time, A.A. testified, she and her friends were horsing around on the street.
A.A. testified that she turned back and “seen Harry shoot Manny” from about 60 feet away. She said that Ruiz took the gun out of his waistband and shot Felix in the left temple. Justice Kleiman asked A.A. whether it was the right or left temple. A.A. said she did not remember.
A.A. said the shooter had not held the gun above Felix’s head and that Felix’s head moved backward “in a jerking motion.” Later, A.A. agreed with the prosecutor, when they asked, “At the time you heard the shot, you indicated that Manny jerked his head back.” (This was a critical detail because of the bullet’s trajectory and the height differential between Ruiz and Felix, who was 6 feet tall. Ruiz’s post-conviction attorney would later say it was “wildly implausible” that Ruiz, at 5 feet, could fire a weapon straight down into the temple of a man a foot taller.)
A.A. testified that she then saw Ruiz go down West 135th Street and that she went home and did not go back out that night. She denied that she had seen Ruiz enter the building at 509 West 135th Street or that she told the police that information. She said she did not tell anyone, including C.A. and M.M., what she had seen. She said she came forward after “the guys from 135th came to my house knocking on my door.
Justice Kleiman asked A.A. why she hadn’t come forward sooner. A.A. said: “I was scared. His friends tried to rape me.” Justice Kleiman struck that testimony from the record.
C.A. testified that she heard a single gunshot as she and A.A. neared 135th Street. She said she saw a man with a black vest and cap near M.M., but she did not see his face. M.M.’s testimony tracked C.A.’s testimony, although she also said the man was Hispanic and not wearing a shirt.
Detective Louis Torellas testified that Ruiz was wearing a black vest with no shirt at the time of his arrest. Ruiz did not testify, but his attorney presented five alibi witnesses, including his mother, who testified that Ruiz was in his apartment at the time of the shooting. In addition, Dominguez and a neighbor named Alex Gonzalez testified about a gunman, who was not Ruiz, entering the building at 509 West 135th Street after the shooting. Dominguez and Gonzalez then testified during cross-examination that they might have had their dates confused. Several of Ruiz’s alibi witnesses testified that they heard more than one shot.
The jury convicted Ruiz of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon on November 16. Justice Harold Rothwax imposed the maximum sentence, 25 years to life in prison. Ruiz told the judge, “Your Honor, I’m innocent.” Justice Rothwax said, “Go in, sir, you have been found guilty.
On October 31, 1996, Ruiz filed a motion for a new trial, asserting new evidence of innocence, including statements from four new witnesses, who said they had seen the gunman and that this person’s description did not match Ruiz. In addition, Ruiz submitted an affidavit from C.A., who said that A.A. approached her in a witness holding room, with M.M. present, and said that she had testified falsely that Ruiz was the shooter “even though she had not seen who had done the shooting.”
In response, the state included a statement from M.M. and two detectives who were in the holding room. Each denied C.A.’s statement about A.A.’s recantation.
Justice Rothwax denied the motion on February 10, 1997. The New York County Supreme Court’s Appellate Division affirmed the ruling and the New York Court of Appeals then denied Ruiz’s application to appeal. Ruiz turned to the federal courts, filing a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus on May 17, 1999. His petition said that there had been insufficient evidence to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and that Justice Rothwax had erred in denying his motion for a new trial. On September 30, 2003, a judge adopted the recommendations of a federal magistrate judge and denied Ruiz’s habeas petition. The magistrate judge had written that the new witnesses were cumulative and that C.A.’s statement was uncorroborated hearsay.
On May 3, 2000, while Ruiz’s habeas petition was pending, a man known in court documents as J.M. was arrested on drug and conspiracy charges by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. J.M.’s drug organization was based around Amsterdam Avenue and 138 th Street. During a proffer in his drug case, J.M. said that he hired a man known as “Shorty” to kill Felix, paying him $4,000 upfront and $4,000 upon completion. J.M. said that he did not know who actually killed Felix, only that someone other than Ruiz was the person he hired to do the job.
In 2002, officials at the New York District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan learned of J.M.’s statement. An assistant district attorney met with J.M. on June 24, 2002. J.M. said that “Shorty” was Dominican and 5’ 4” tall.
A month later, on July 9, 2002, a witness known as K.B. gave a statement to federal authorities. K.B. worked for J.M., “cooking” powder cocaine into crack, and he said in his proffer that J.M. had been angry at Felix for robbing him and had vowed to get revenge. K.B. also said that Ruiz wasn’t the shooter. An intern with the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote up the interview and gave the notes to the same assistant district attorney who had met with J.M.
K.B. said he was with J.M. when J.M. received the call that Felix was dead, and he and J.M. went to the scene. K.B. said he saw a girl who had been waiting for Felix telling others that “it was him … some kid from 135th Street,” who killed Felix. K.B. said he saw J.M. approach the girl and tell her she was wrong.
Also in 2002, K.B. spoke with a state prosecutor. In that statement, K.B. said that two weeks after Felix’s death, he and J.M. were at a club and J.M. pointed out a “crazy guy” and said he was the person who killed Felix.
In 2004, J.M. spoke with an investigator working on behalf of Ruiz. J.M. said in an affidavit that “Shorty” was not Ruiz, although the two men looked similar, particularly with regards to their height.
In 2009, a private investigator working for Ruiz’s attorney, Ron Kuby, reached out to A.A. and met with her then-husband. The man told the investigator that A.A. wanted to come forward and “do the right thing,” but she was afraid of repercussions from the New York District Attorney’s Office. Later, a prosecutor sent the investigator a cease-and-desist letter, threatening him with prosecution if he continued to try and contact A.A.
Ruiz was granted parole and released from prison on June 5, 2019. At his parole hearing, he continued to assert his innocence.
In January 2024, Detective Carlos Vasquez came across Ruiz’s case while working on a cold case of a separate murder. He became convinced of Ruiz’s innocence and contacted the district attorney’s office, which began an investigation through its Post-Conviction Justice Unit (PCJU). The PCJU contacted Kuby and told him about the re-investigation.
The PCJU interviewed 33 witnesses, including J.M. and K.B. Both men gave accounts consistent with their earlier statements. K.B. also said that although there were a group of “boys from 135th Street” that caused problems in the neighborhood, breaking into cars and smashing things on the street, Ruiz was not part of that group.
The PCJU also interviewed M.M. and A.A. M.M. said that A.A. asked her on the night of the shooting, “Did you hear the gunshot,” but A.A. never said she had seen the shooting, knew who had been shot, or that she was particularly upset. M.M. also said that A.A. never mentioned anything about men trying to rape her.
C.A. was dead but had previously said in an affidavit that A.A. once admitted to her that she had falsely testified about Ruiz.
In her interview,. A.A. said that she saw Ruiz shoot Felix. She said both her friends ran away, but she stayed with Felix and saw Ruiz return to the crime scene. (She had testified that she went home right after seeing the murder.) She also repeated her assertions that friends of Ruiz had harassed her on the night she first gave a statement to police. She added that Ruiz’s associates had thrown a Molotov cocktail into her apartment in the days after the murder, setting her home on fire. She told PCJU investigators that she did not remember making the rape allegation at trial.
The investigation also turned up a new witness. Elvin R. told investigators that he knew Ruiz and Felix, and that he saw Ruiz on his fire escape just after the gunman fled. He said that Ruiz had nothing to do with the murder.
Separately, the PCJU found and disclosed documents that described $17,038 in payments to A.A. and her mother for lodging, living expenses, and transportation. The payments began after Ruiz’s arrest and continued through his sentencing. The district attorney’s office also asked the New York City Housing Authority to expedite the family’s request for public housing.
On April 6, 2026, Ruiz, still represented by Kuby, moved to vacate his conviction. The motion said that the district attorney’s office failed to disclose the assistance that A.A. and her mother received, which Ruiz’s trial attorney could have used to impeach her credibility and impartiality. It also said that the state had sat on much of the exculpatory information provided by J.M. and K.B. for more than 20 years.
In the filing, Kuby referenced the PCJU investigation. He wrote: “That body of work, as a whole, paints a terrifying picture of life in a few blocks of Manhattan in 1993—Puerto Rican drug dealers on West 135th Street and Dominican dealers on West 139th . Families were devastated by drugs, and children were pretty much left to fend for themselves in an unspeakably violent environment. The police were indifferent to any crimes short of murder, and then the idea was to make an arrest and move on to the next one. And the DA’s office was an instrument of mass incarceration not justice.”
In its response, the state agreed that Ruiz’s conviction should be vacated, and his case dismissed. It said it could find no records indicating that prosecutors disclosed the assistance received by A.A. and her mother. (The trial prosecutor declined to discuss the case with the PCJU.) It also said it had no basis to dispute Ruiz’s claim that the state didn’t make timely disclosures of the proffers by K.B. and J.M.
The response also said there was no evidence that A.A. and her mother were harassed by a group of men on the night A.A. named Ruiz as the shooter. The response said that the statements given by J.M. and K.B. pointed to another man as the shooter. The statements corroborated each other, and they explained an alternative theory of the crime, based on revenge, theft, and drugs. At trial, Ruiz’s witnesses testified about a suspect who had dark skin, kinky hair, and was about 5’ 5” tall. “The proffers of J.M. and K.B. provide credible evidence that directly supports this defense theory and therefore could have raised a reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds at the time of trial,” the response said.
On April 27, 2026, Justice Robert Mandelbaum vacated Ruiz’s conviction and dismissed his case. He sharply criticized the former prosecutor for her failure to cooperate with the reinvestigation. “To this court, that speaks volumes,” he said.
Justice Mandelbaum’s ruling said although the state’s response centered on the new evidence provided by J.M. and K.B., which suggested Ruiz’s guilt couldn’t be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, “The record powerfully suggests more—that Mr. Ruiz is, and always was, innocent of this crime.”
“Regrettably, nothing this court can do suffices to right the grievous wrong that has occurred here,” Mandelbaum wrote. “Mr. Ruiz will never get back the 25 long years of his imprisonment. The lost time spent with his family can never be restored. No apology, no level of regret for what defendant has suffered can even begin to rectify it. All this court is empowered to do is to grant this motion. I wish there were more. Harry Ruiz should not have been convicted. That tragic injustice ends today. The indictment is dismissed.”
After his case was dismissed, Ruiz told reporters: “I can breathe. I can finally breathe. I can finally live life. I felt that even though I came home in 2019, I still felt a heavy weight on me that needed to be lifted. And today is the day.”
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 05-18-2026
