After serving 18 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, Fernando Bermudez is officially an innocent man.
Cheers and sobs erupted in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday as a judge dismissed the indictment against the father of three - and scolded prosecutors for not acknowledging sooner that they'd nabbed the wrong man.
"Thank you, thank you," a sobbing Bermudez, 40, told Supreme Court Justice John Cataldo and a courtroom packed with relatives and friends.
Bermudez was convicted in the 1991 shooting death of Raymond Blount, 16, after Blount punched another teen in the Marc Ballroom near Union Square in Manhattan.
He has been serving a 23-years-to-life sentence at Sing Sing.
He won't go free immediately, though; he faces a 27-month federal drug sentence from a 1991 bust.
"I hope for you a much better future," Cataldo told Bermudez after issuing his 78-page ruling.
Cataldo dismissed the case on several grounds: a cooperating witness lied in court, and witnesses were improperly allowed to confer about a mugshot of Bermudez before identifying him as the shooter. All have recanted.
"I find by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant has demonstrated his actual innocence," Cataldo said, refusing to order a new trial on the charges.
The question of who killed Blount in the early morning hours of Aug. 4, 1991, remains a mystery.
"I want them to go and get the real person," said Bermudez's emotional wife, Crystal Bermudez, said. "This is too long, but justice is ours today.
"He's a good man. He didn't deserve to have this happen to him."
Bermudez's lawyers say the gunman may have been a neighborhood drug dealer eyed early in the investigation.
"They suffered and we suffered," Crystal Bermudez, 35, said of her and Blount's family. "It's not fair to him. That man is in his grave right now."
Prosecutors said the victim's family left New York years ago. They could not be reached for comment.
It was unclear whether prosecutors - who maintain that Bermudez is guilty - will appeal.
"We very strongly disagree with the judge's decision, and we are considering our options," Chief Assistant District Attorney Mark Dwyer said.
Even as jubilant relief turned into emotional tears from Bermudez's parents and wife, the father of girls ages 18 and 8 and a boy, 3, was cuffed and taken back to prison.
"We fought for justice and we won!" said Bermudez's 68-year-old dad, Frank, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who works as a parking lot attendant and lives in Washington Heights.
Barry Pollack, one of Bermudez's lawyers, asked the judge to recommend that the federal sentence be vacated. Cataldo agreed.
"At this point, Fernando doesn't owe the system time - they owe him," Pollack said outside court.
"You combine the cooperating witness who lied with the eyewitnesses who conferred with one another and you have an innocent man in jail for 18 years."
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