New York CPL 440.10 motion asks Erie County court to vacate conviction after twelve years of imprisonment, decades of claimed innocence, unmatched fingerprint evidence, all-white juries, corroborating sworn confessions, and troubling parallels to other Buffalo wrongful-conviction cases.
Nationwide — Three men have now confessed under oath to participating in the 1991 armed robbery of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Erie County. None of them is Benjamin Castricone. Yet Castricone, a Black man who was 24 years old at the time of his arrest, spent approximately twelve years in prison for that crime. Before his life became defined by a conviction, he was a young father, husband, athlete, and working man whose future was beginning to open.
Born in 1967, Castricone was 24 when he was arrested. He had two young daughters. He had a marriage. He had been given an opportunity as an undrafted free-agent prospect with the Buffalo Bills, a chance to compete for the dream he had worked toward for years. He had also been hired by Ford Motor Company, giving him the possibility of a stable career and the ability to support his family with dignity.
A newly filed [July 1, 2026] amended motion in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Erie, now asks the Court to vacate Castricone’s conviction in People v. Castricone, Indictment No. 91-1510-001. Filed under New York Criminal Procedure Law § 440.10, the motion argues that Castricone was wrongfully convicted because of mistaken eyewitness identification, the failure to investigate exculpatory evidence, and newly discovered sworn confessions by men who identify themselves and one another as the actual participants in the robbery.
What Officials Knew Before Sentencing
The most troubling part of the motion is not merely that officials may have convicted the wrong man. It is that, before sentencing, the court and prosecution had already been placed on notice of evidence pointing to another group of perpetrators. According to the motion, Johnnie Lane executed a sworn affidavit on June 3, 1994. In that affidavit, Lane admitted his own involvement in the KFC robbery and identified the other participants as Eric Gordon, Derrick Brown, and Tuffy Summerville. Lane stated that Castricone was not in the vehicle, was not at the restaurant, was not involved in the crime, and was not known to him.
This was not a vague rumor. It was a sworn confession by a man who described the robbery in detail. It named names. It described the car, the trip from Buffalo toward Main and Transit, the roles of the participants, the use of a mask, the presence of a .22 caliber revolver, the return to the vehicle, and the splitting of the robbery proceeds.
At the same time, the authorities also possessed fingerprint evidence recovered from the crime scene that did not match Castricone. Before sentencing, Castricone personally pleaded for someone to check the fingerprints against the men identified by Lane. The motion argues that this plea went unanswered.
The failure to investigate that combination of evidence is at the heart of the case now before the Court: a sworn confession by one alleged participant, names of alleged accomplices, a crime-scene fingerprint that did not match Castricone, and a defendant begging the court to compare the fingerprint to the men who had been named.
Years later, after Lane’s confession, Eric Gordon executed a sworn affidavit admitting his own involvement in the KFC robbery.
In 2025, Derrick Brown executed a sworn affidavit likewise admitting his own involvement. All three men have now acknowledged that Castricone was a stranger, unknown to them, and was not involved in the robbery for which he was convicted. Remarkably, subsequent to Castricone’s imprisonment, a January 6, 1993 news report provided with the case materials stated that Johnny Lane, 18, and Derrick Brown, 17, had been charged in the shooting deaths of two people – a convenience store manager and a pizza deliveryman – during a series of robbery attempts that also left three other people wounded.
The filing argues that the failure to act on that evidence cannot be dismissed as ordinary human error.
“This was not a missing clue buried in a forgotten file. This was a sworn confession placed before the court. It named names. It gave details. It matched later confessions. And it came alongside physical evidence that excluded Benjamin. At best, the failure to investigate represents gross incompetence. At worst, it reflects the intentional malicious prosecution and imprisonment of an innocent man,” says Louis Rosado, attorney for Benjamin Castricone.
Rogers Hicks Thirty-Three-Year Refusal to Give Up
The motion also reflects the decades-long work of Rogers Hicks, who has worked on the case for approximately thirty-three years. Hicks is credited with the longevity and persistence behind the investigation, including efforts to locate and develop evidence from the actual perpetrators, and with helping research the factual and legal basis for the motion.
Hicks, on June 4, 1993, drafted and presented a Petition on behalf of U.S. Citizens of Afro-American descent to the United Nations World Court c/o Centre for Human Rights, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Geneva, Switzerland (source: Challenger News, Sept. 28, 1994, Vol. 30, No. 39: “UN Appointee to Hold Hearings on Racism in the United States”). An adaptation of the UN Petition is Hicks’ published book, RACE JUSTICE: Judicial Atrocities Committed Against People of Color.
Buffalo Has Seen This Before: The Valentino Dixon Parallel
The Castricone case also echoes another Buffalo wrongful-conviction story that eventually received national attention: the case of Valentino Dixon, a Black Buffalo man, was convicted in connection with the 1991 killing of Torriano Jackson and served twenty-seven years in prison before an Erie County court vacated his conviction in 2018 after suppressed evidence was discovered establishing his actual innocence. Likewise, is the case of John Walker Jr. and the Buffalo Five. Walker spent more than twenty-two years in prison, and another seventeen years on parole for a murder he maintained he did not commit. Boyd spent nearly a quarter century in prison and then years on parole before his conviction was vacated. Gibson was released in 2008 but died less than a year later. These were not temporary errors.
In 2021, a court vacated the convictions of Walker and Boyd, and Erie County did not retry them. In 2025, a unanimous federal jury awarded Walker $28 million in a civil-rights verdict. Later that year, a federal jury awarded $80 million to Boyd’s estate, an award widely reported as among the largest wrongful-conviction verdicts in United States history.
Call to Action
Benjamin Castricone, his family, and his legal team are calling on the Court, the Erie County District Attorney’s Office, and the public to confront the evidence now before them. The case file is no longer a closed chapter from 1991. It is an active demand for justice supported by sworn statements, a documented fingerprint issue, and decades of persistence.
The motion now asks the Court to do what Castricone has sought for more than thirty-three years: formally recognize his innocence.
For more information:
Full Press Release – https://castricone-casedocs.com/pressrelease.html
YouTube Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fj02P1PBM
For press inquiries, contact Rogers Hicks at (585) 480-0101 or justice4castricone@castricone-casedocs.com