Three half-brothers who were locked up by discredited ex-NYPD homicide detective Louis Scarcella — spending two decades in prison for murders they did not commit — have won a massive $17 million settlement from the city, the comptroller announced Monday.
The belated Christmas present for Robert Hill and his half-brothers Alvena Jenette and Darryl Austin comes eight months after the three were exonerated by a Brooklyn judge following a lengthy probe by District Attorney Kenneth Thompson.
The money brings the total settlement cost of Scarcella's rigged cases to $23.5 million.
Some 70 of the former Brooklyn North Homicide detective's murder convictions remain under investigation by the DA's conviction-review unit, which is probing allegations of witness coercion, false confessions and the burying of exculpatory evidence.
A half-dozen of the murder cases that are under investigation — including those of Hill, Jenette and Austin — relied on the testimony of a crack-addicted prostitute, now deceased, named Teresa Gomez.
In asking a Brooklyn judge to overturn the three half-brothers' convictions in May, a prosecutor argued that Gomez was "hopelessly addicted to drugs, criminal in her conduct for the most part, increasingly erratic in terms of her accounts."
The exonerations and settlement have come too late for the middle brother of the three, Austin, who died behind bars 14 years ago, at age 37, after his wrongful conviction on a 1995 murder.
The eldest brother, Hill, 53, had been found guilty of a 1987 murder, and had been weeks away from being paroled when the exoneration came — springing him after 26 years of prison.
The youngest brother, Jenette, 50, had already been on parole after spending 21 years in prison as Austin's co-defendant for the 1985 murder.
Another man arrested by Scarcella – Derrick Hamilton – was exonerated on Friday. He had served over 20 years in prison before he was paroled in 2011.
Derrick Hamilton and his daughter MayaPhoto: AP
In 2013 David Ranta was cleared after 23 years behind bars for the murder of a rabbi amid allegations Scarcella had framed Ranta by telling a witness to pick the man with "the big nose" out of the lineup, along with other shady tactics.
Ranta won a $6.4 million settlement from the city in February.
"The trials of Messrs. Austin, Jennette, and Hill that resulted in 60 years of cumulative incarceration came under great scrutiny by the Kings County Conviction Review Unit. I am pleased that my office was able to resolve these claims," city comptroller Scott Stringer said in a statement.
Louise Austin, the mother of all three individuals, will receive $3.85 million on behalf of the deceased Austin.
Jennette will receive a settlement of $6 million and Robert Hill will receive a settlement of $7.15 million, according to the comptroller.
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