Three Men Have Now Confessed Under Oath to the 1991 KFC Robbery. None of Them Is Benjamin Castricone.

Who Benjamin Castricone Was Before the Arrest

Before his life became defined by a conviction, Benjamin Castricone 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.

In his personal statement, Castricone describes the day of his arrest as the moment time stopped. What began as an ordinary day became, in his words, the last day he would experience freedom for the next twelve years. He wrote that he believed, at first, the truth would come out and the mistake would be corrected. Instead, the mistake became a conviction, the conviction became a prison sentence, and the prison sentence became the defining wound of his adult life.

“In a single day, everything I had worked so hard to build disappeared.”

The robbery at issue occurred on August 8, 1991. Castricone was indicted on August 28, 1991. He was convicted after his first trial in 1992. That conviction was reversed by the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, after the appellate court found error relating to identification evidence in a case where there was no physical evidence linking him to the robbery. He was later convicted again after a retrial and served approximately twelve years in prison.

How the Case Went Wrong: Identification Without Physical Evidence

The amended CPL 440.10 motion argues that Castricone’s conviction rested almost entirely on eyewitness identification, not physical evidence. That distinction matters because the sole disputed issue at trial was identity: whether Castricone was one of the men who committed the armed robbery at the KFC restaurant.

According to the motion, there was no physical evidence tying him to the crime. A fingerprint recovered from the crime scene did not match Castricone. One witness did not identify him as a perpetrator and instead mistakenly identified another innocent person during identification procedures. Another witness initially described one robber only as a young Black male and later acknowledged uncertainty, admitting that Castricone could be innocent and merely looked a great deal like the robber. A third witness identified Castricone but also conceded that he might merely resemble the robber.

The motion further argues that the identification procedures themselves were unreliable and that a suggestive photo array contributed to mistaken identification. In short, the filing presents the case not as one supported by objective proof, but as a conviction built on a fragile identification process that became more suspect as additional evidence emerged.

The danger of mistaken identification is not theoretical. Courts, scholars, and innocence organizations have long recognized eyewitness misidentification as a major contributor to wrongful convictions. The concern is heightened when the identification is cross-racial and unsupported by physical evidence. In Castricone’s case, that concern is central: he is Black, the identifying witnesses were white, and according to newly brought-forward case details, he was tried twice before all-white juries.

What Officials Knew Before Sentencing After the Second Trial

The most troubling part of the motion is not merely that officials may have convicted the wrong man. It is that, by the conclusion of the second trial and 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. According to the filing, he told the court:

“I just wish somebody could just check the fingerprints, see if they match these people.”

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.

The Fingerprint: Objective Evidence That Did Not Match Castricone

Eyewitness testimony asks a jury to believe what a witness remembers. Fingerprint evidence asks a different question: what did the crime scene physically reveal?

According to the amended motion, fingerprint evidence was recovered from the KFC crime scene and did not match Benjamin Castricone. That fact should have been a turning point. In a case where identity was the central issue, an unmatched crime-scene fingerprint was not a minor detail. It was an investigative lead pointing away from the defendant and toward someone else.

The motion argues that officials failed to take the obvious next step: compare the recovered fingerprint against the men identified by Lane, including Derrick Brown, Eric Gordon, Johnnie Lane, and Tuffy Summerville. That failure is especially important because Brown later stated in his affidavit that, at the time of the KFC robbery, he had no prior criminal conviction and therefore his fingerprints would not have been in the police database. If true, a database search would not necessarily have identified him. A direct comparison would have been required.

Castricone understood that. Standing before the court, he asked for precisely that comparison. The motion alleges that no one did it.

Johnnie Lane’s Confession: The First Breakthrough Ignored

Johnnie Lane’s 1994 affidavit is presented in the motion as the first major breakthrough. Lane admitted participating in the KFC robbery as the driver. He stated that he was already in possession of a stolen vehicle, that he drove with Eric Gordon and Tuffy Summerville, that they picked up Derrick Brown, and that they proceeded to the KFC restaurant near Main Street and Transit Road.

Lane’s account described roles. He stated that Gordon put on a face mask and entered the restaurant with Brown, while Summerville acted as a lookout and Lane remained in the vehicle. He stated that Brown returned with a .22 caliber revolver and that Gordon had the proceeds of the robbery, which were later divided among the participants.

Most importantly, Lane stated that Benjamin Castricone was not one of the people in the car and was not involved in the robbery.

That affidavit was available before sentencing. The motion alleges that, despite its detail and significance, officials did not meaningfully investigate Lane, did not question the men he named, and did not compare the unmatched fingerprint evidence to the alleged participants.

If the motion is correct, the system did not merely miss evidence. It was shown evidence and failed to follow it.

The Gordon and Brown Affidavits: Later Confessions Corroborate Lane

Years later, Eric Gordon executed a sworn affidavit admitting his own involvement in the KFC robbery. Gordon stated that he, Derrick Brown, Tuffy Summerville, and Johnnie Lane traveled to the restaurant, that Lane remained in the vehicle, that Gordon and Brown entered the restaurant wearing masks, that Brown carried a .22 caliber revolver, and that the robbery proceeds were split afterward. Gordon further stated that Benjamin Castricone was innocent of the offense.

In 2025, Derrick Brown executed a sworn affidavit that likewise stated Benjamin Castricone was not in the car, was not involved in the robbery, and was not known to Brown before Brown learned that Castricone had been convicted. Brown’s statement also addressed the fingerprint issue and explained why a database search at the time may not have produced a match to him.

The motion argues that the Lane, Gordon, and Brown affidavits corroborate one another in material ways. They describe the same robbery, the same general participants, the same use of masks, the same weapon, the same division of proceeds, and the same central fact: Benjamin Castricone was not part of it.

Those sworn statements now sit beside the original weaknesses in the prosecution’s case: no physical evidence linking Castricone, uncertain eyewitness identification, a crime-scene fingerprint that excluded him, and an apparent failure to investigate the men who were named.

Lane and Brown Were Not Obscure Leads

The motion further argues that Lane and Brown were not obscure, unreachable, or unknown to law enforcement. They were already in custody in connection with violent robbery conduct that was strikingly similar to the KFC case, and the motion identifies Lane and Brown as men who later stood convicted in connection with the murder of Buffalo pizzeria worker Michael Sutfin during a robbery spree.

A January 7, 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 report stated that robbery was the alleged motive in each shooting.

That context should not go unnoticed. The KFC case involved an armed robbery of a restaurant. Lane’s affidavit identified Brown as carrying a .22 caliber revolver during the KFC robbery. The 1993 report described Lane and Brown as charged in a robbery-motivated crime spree involving shootings, and the motion notes that Lane and Brown were later convicted by a jury in connection with the murder of Michael Sutfin and received life sentences.

The point is not that those later crimes alone prove the KFC case. The point is that Lane and Brown were available, known to law enforcement, and alleged to have engaged in highly similar conduct at the very moment Castricone was asking the court to follow the confession and compare the unmatched fingerprint evidence. In that context, the failure to question them or test the physical evidence becomes even harder to explain.

From Human Error to Something More Serious

Wrongful convictions can result from honest mistakes. Witnesses can be sincere and wrong. Investigators can follow a bad lead. Prosecutors can believe they are pursuing the right person. Courts can make rulings later shown to be flawed.

But the amended motion argues that Castricone’s case crossed a different line. By the time of the second trial and sentencing, officials allegedly had a sworn confession from one participant, names of accomplices, a crime-scene fingerprint that did not match Castricone, and a direct plea from Castricone to compare that fingerprint to the people who had been named.

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 of an innocent man.”

- Louis Rosado, attorney for Benjamin Castricone

The motion asks the Court to determine whether a conviction obtained and preserved under those circumstances can stand.

Race, Cross-Racial Identification, and Two All-White Juries

The case also raises issues that are now part of a national conversation about race, jury composition, and whether Black defendants can receive a fair trial when tried before juries that do not include Black jurors.

According to newly brought-forward case details, Castricone, a Black man, was tried by all-white juries in both trials. The case depended almost entirely upon eyewitness identification by white witnesses. The motion also notes the particular concern presented by cross-racial identification, especially where identification testimony is not supported by physical evidence.

Standing alone, the racial composition of a jury does not prove that a verdict was wrong. Nor does it mean that every juror acted with conscious bias. But in a case built on cross-racial identification, tried before all-white juries, with no physical evidence linking Castricone to the crime, the racial context cannot be separated from the fairness question.

For decades, research and wrongful-conviction cases have shown that cross-racial identifications carry a heightened risk of error. National legal discussions have also focused on how jury composition affects deliberations, confidence in verdicts, and the public’s belief that the justice system speaks for the whole community.

In Castricone’s case, the question is not whether race alone explains what happened. The question is whether confidence in the conviction can survive when the trial evidence depended on uncertain cross-racial identifications, the juries were all-white, the physical evidence did not match him, and three men have now sworn that they committed the robbery without him.

“The question is not whether any particular juror acted with racial bias. The question is whether a conviction resting almost entirely on uncertain cross-racial eyewitness identification deserves confidence when physical evidence excluded Benjamin Castricone and sworn confessions now identify other perpetrators.”

- Louis Rosado

The Human Cost: Twelve Years, a Marriage, Two Daughters, and a Future Taken

For Benjamin Castricone, the consequences of the conviction cannot be measured only in court filings.

He lost the opportunity to pursue football. He lost his job opportunity with Ford. He lost the ordinary life he had been building. He lost the chance to be present for the childhoods of his daughters.

His oldest daughter, Alexis, was seven years old when he went to prison. His youngest daughter, Ashley, was seven months old. Castricone missed birthdays, holidays, school milestones, graduations, family celebrations, and the everyday moments that make up fatherhood.

“A father can never recover the years he loses watching his children grow.”

He also lost his marriage. His wife, a deputy sheriff, stood by him for years, but after eight years of visits, separation, and emotional exhaustion, the burden became too much. Castricone wrote that he kissed her goodbye through tears, knowing he could not fight for his marriage and his freedom at the same time.

“No prison sentence could ever equal the pain of losing the person you planned to spend your life with because of something you never did.”

Prison itself left wounds that did not end with release. Castricone wrote of witnessing violence, learning to live in constant awareness, and being forced to suppress fear and emotion simply to survive.

Freedom, when it finally came, did not restore the lost years. It did not restore the career that never began, the marriage that ended, or the childhoods he missed. That is why, for Castricone, clearing his name is not symbolic. It is the only form of justice still available.

Rogers Hicks and a Family’s Thirty-Three-Year Refusal to Give Up

The motion also reflects the decades-long work of Rogers Hicks, Castricone’s cousin, 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’role is not simply administrative. It represents the kind of family persistence often required in wrongful-conviction cases: years of letters, records, interviews, legal research, unanswered questions, and refusal to allow a case to vanish into old court files.

A 1997 recommendation letter from attorney Carolyn Connors Balowitz described Hicks as unusually industrious, legally talented, and deeply committed to legal work, noting his independent identification and development of complex legal issues. Balowitz wrote that “the work on his post-conviction motion was performed by Mr. Hicks himself,” and added that, based on the quality of his paralegal work, she had gained “a reasonable probability of a second reversal in an identification case against an apparently innocent defendant.” Decades later, the Castricone motion reflects that same persistence: a long effort to gather the evidence that, according to the motion, the system failed to pursue when it mattered most.

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.

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. Public reporting on Dixon’s case described many of the same warning signs now present in Castricone’s motion: no physical evidence linking Dixon to the murder, conflicting or unreliable witness testimony, and another man who had confessed to the crime.

Golf Digest played an unlikely role in bringing Dixon’s case to public attention after publishing not only his prison artwork, but also an investigation into the weakness of the conviction. The case later drew support from Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative, pro bono counsel, and the Erie County District Attorney’s conviction-review process.

When Dixon’s conviction was vacated, LaMarr Scott, the man who had admitted responsibility for the killing, entered court and pleaded guilty. The lesson was painful but clear: a confession by the actual perpetrator can exist for years while the wrong man remains imprisoned, unless someone with authority is willing to examine the evidence with fresh eyes.

Castricone’s motion presents an even more urgent version of that concern. Here, according to the motion, officials had a sworn confession from Johnnie Lane before sentencing after the second trial. That confession named accomplices. A fingerprint from the crime scene did not match Castricone. Lane and Brown were in custody in connection with similar violent robbery conduct. Yet, according to the motion, no meaningful effort was made to question them about the KFC robbery or compare the fingerprint evidence to them.

The Dixon case shows that Buffalo has already seen what can happen when a conviction survives despite a confession by another man and a lack of physical evidence. The Castricone motion asks the Court not to wait decades longer to correct what the filing says is another wrongful conviction built on unreliable identification and ignored evidence.

Buffalo Has Also Seen This Before: John Walker Jr. and the Buffalo Five

The Castricone motion also arrives in the shadow of another Erie County wrongful-conviction case that many readers may not fully know: John Walker Jr. and the Buffalo Five.

Walker was one of several Black teenagers arrested after the 1976 robbery and murder of William Crawford in Buffalo. Public reporting on the case has described a prosecution that depended heavily on the testimony of a teenage witness, Tyrone Woodruff, who later said he had testified falsely after police pressure. Walker, Darryl Boyd, and Darryn Gibson were convicted; Floyd Martin was acquitted; and the group later became known locally as the Buffalo Five.

The case became a powerful example of how a conviction can survive for decades even when serious questions emerge about witness testimony, withheld evidence, and investigative tunnel vision. In later litigation, Walker and Boyd alleged that Buffalo detectives coerced teenage witnesses and that Buffalo Police and Erie County prosecutors concealed evidence pointing to other suspects. Public accounts of the case have also focused on a crime-scene photograph that reportedly showed a single set of footprints leaving the murder scene - evidence that supported the defense theory that the crime was not committed by the group of teenagers.

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. They were life-defining events that consumed decades.

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.

The Walker case matters here because it shows that Erie County has already confronted what happens when official certainty outlasts the evidence. The allegations in Walker's civil case - coerced testimony, concealed exculpatory evidence, and the failure to follow evidence pointing away from the accused - echo the concerns now raised by Castricone's motion.

Castricone's case presents its own record and must be judged on its own evidence. But the parallels are difficult to miss. In Walker, a conviction rested on testimony later challenged as false and evidence allegedly withheld or ignored. In Castricone, the motion argues that the conviction rested on uncertain eyewitness identification while officials had a sworn confession from Johnnie Lane, names of the alleged accomplices, and fingerprint evidence that did not match Castricone.

The lesson of the Walker case is not merely that wrongful convictions happen. It is that they can persist for decades when courts and prosecutors fail to confront inconvenient evidence. The Castricone motion asks Erie County to confront that lesson before another wrongful conviction is allowed to remain in the record as if the truth never surfaced.

Why This Case Matters Beyond Benjamin Castricone

The Castricone case arrives at a time when Buffalo and Erie County continue to confront the legacy of wrongful convictions and disputed prosecutions. The cases of Valentino Dixon, John Walker Jr., Darryl Boyd, and the Buffalo Five have shown that wrongful convictions are not abstract legal mistakes. They are local history, and they carry consequences measured in decades.

Those cases matter because they show that wrongful convictions are not abstract. They are local. They involve names, families, lost decades, and court records that can preserve a mistake long after the evidence has begun pointing elsewhere.

But Castricone’s case also raises broader national questions.

What happens when a city has already seen an innocent man freed after decades because another man’s confession was not enough to stop a wrongful conviction?

Those questions are larger than one courtroom and one conviction. They go to public confidence in the justice system itself.

Justice is not simply the punishment of the guilty. It is also the protection of the innocent. When evidence points away from a convicted person, the system has a duty to look. When evidence points toward others, the system has a duty to follow. When a man spends twelve years in prison for a crime three other men say they committed, the system has a duty to answer.

What the Motion Seeks

The amended CPL 440.10 motion seeks to vacate Benjamin Castricone’s conviction under New York law based on claims of actual innocence, newly discovered evidence, official misconduct, and constitutional violations. The motion asks the Court to vacate the judgment, dismiss the charges, and expunge all references to the matter from relevant files and databases.

More than three decades after his arrest, Castricone is not asking the Court for sympathy. He is asking the Court to examine the evidence: three sworn confessions, an unmatched fingerprint, a prosecution case built on uncertain identification, and a record that shows he pleaded for the evidence to be checked before he was sent to prison.

No ruling can give him back the twelve years he lost. No order can restore the childhood years he missed with his daughters. No decision can rebuild the marriage that collapsed under the weight of imprisonment. But a court can still correct the record. It can still acknowledge the truth. It can still say that the wrong man was convicted.

“No court can return the twelve years that were taken from me. No decision can restore the opportunities I lost, the marriage that ended, or the years I never had with my children. But acknowledging the truth matters. Correcting a wrongful conviction matters.”

- Benjamin Castricone

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 that he was not the man who committed the crime.

The 440 motion and supporting exhibit documents may be viewed at: castricone-casedocs.com

About the Filing

The amended CPL 440.10 motion was filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Erie, in People v. Benjamin Castricone, Indictment No. 91-1510-001. The motion seeks relief under CPL § 440.10 based on claims of actual innocence, newly discovered evidence, official misconduct, and constitutional violations.

Media Contact

Rogers Hicks

Ph: (585) 480-0101

Email: justice4castricone@castricone-casedocs.com

Case Materials: https://www.castricone-casedocs.com/document_list.html

Social Media

YouTube Video: Justice For Benjamin