Sufficient is sufficient.
The previous CVS employee cleared within the stabbing demise of a violent shoplifter slammed Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg for charging him in any respect — as an alternative of standing up for hardworking New Yorkers.
“I don’t know why he determined to convey the case to me, however I really feel like this case shouldn’t even go to trial,” Scotty Enoe, 48, advised The Put up in an unique interview Monday.
“I really feel like they’re attempting to place me away for one thing that’s their fault,” he added.
“As a hardworking particular person, the minute you get up for your self, they arrive after you.”
Enoe, who lives in Brooklyn, mentioned serial shoplifter Charles Brito by no means ought to have been allowed out on the streets, free to harass and threaten Massive Apple consumers and employees.
“It’s the prosecutor’s fault,” he mentioned, “as a result of this man had a report … this man shouldn’t even be on the streets to start with.”
The native of Grenada, who has lived and labored in New York Metropolis since transferring to the US in 1996, mentioned he felt he needed to put up a battle, capturing down a proposed plea deal and taking the stand in his personal protection.
“I needed to get my story on the market,” he mentioned. “I needed to make them know, ‘Hear, I work two jobs. I wasn’t on the lookout for no bother with anyone. This man got here in and attacked me from out of nowhere.”
Enoe mentioned he wasn’t offended over the two-year nightmare, which ended when a jury acquitted him of manslaughter after lower than half-hour of deliberations final week in Brito’s July 2023 demise.
However the former shelf stocker mentioned he was fed up with New York’s failing prison justice system.
“People who work in these retail locations to make a residing, to pay the payments, they get harassed by these form of folks each evening,” he mentioned.
“You’re not even protected on the prepare anymore. Simply getting on the prepare to come back to work, it’s like an issue.”
Over time, Enoe mentioned he would even exit of his technique to keep away from confrontations with aggressive vagrants — taking drastic measures like hiding out in a retailer fridge.
“Generally once they are available in I needed to go contained in the cooler and simply keep there till they go away, as a result of a few of them, if you happen to simply watch them too laborious, they begin getting aggressive,” he mentioned.
However Enoe couldn’t flip away when Brito, 50, got here into the Midtown pharmacy on July 6, 2023, attacked him and threatened two feminine co-workers, prompting him to “jab” the homeless man a number of occasions with a knife earlier than the criminal walked out of the shop.
Enoe mentioned he had no thought Brito was mortally wounded till the cops confirmed up — with the officers grilling the employee, who had seen bruises throughout his face.
“It was not dialog,” he recalled. “He didn’t even, you already know, ask me nothing. He simply began saying stuff to me. Issues like, “Oh, you stabbed somebody, you stabbed any individual over CVS items, f—ing good,’ and all this stuff. He didn’t even ask me what occurred.”
Then got here the true blow, when Bragg’s workplace charged him with homicide within the case. The cost was solely lowered later after a grand jury indicted Enoe for manslaughter — which nonetheless carried the potential of as much as 25 years in jail.
“I used to be saying, like, ‘I can’t imagine that simply occurred,’” Enoe remembered, including CVS fired him just a few days after his arrest.
Launched on $100,000 bail due to his different employer, beverage distributor Massive Geyser, Enoe nonetheless needed to put on a monitoring ankle bracelet, an extra humiliation, he mentioned, after being charged for defending himself.
“I couldn’t go to church, however I nonetheless tried to go to church,” he mentioned. “I talked to the sheriff, to present me somewhat additional time to go to church.”
He mentioned prosecutors provided him a plea deal that carried a five-year jail sentence, however Enoe mentioned he and his lawyer, Frank Rothman, shot down the ludicrous provide on the spot.
“Frank, he was like, ‘What do you wish to do?’ I inform him, ‘We wish to go to trial. We’re preventing all of it the best way,’” Enoe recalled.
And Enoe insisted on taking the stand to inform jurors his story.
“I wasn’t even anxious about taking the stand. I knew I wasn’t gonna let her wipe the ground with me,” he mentioned, referring to the assistant district legal professional on the case.
The Manhattan Supreme Courtroom jury additionally heard from former co-workers, who described how the serial shoplifter threatened “I can kill y’all” and slammed Enoe towards the doorways of coolers he’d stuffed with drinks earlier than the bloody melee.
Jurors finally solely discovered Enoe responsible of a lesser weapons depend for possession of brass knuckles, however he’s not anticipated to face any jail time on that conviction.
Enoe famous his ordeal left a bitter style in his mouth, though he wouldn’t say if he deliberate on taking any authorized motion over the miscarriage of justice.
“I don’t really feel anger in direction of no person,” he mentioned Monday. “I simply really feel aid, completely satisfied to return to work, completely satisfied to get again to my life. I really feel completely satisfied, not offended.”
Bragg’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The Manhattan DA’s conviction fee has plunged yearly since he took workplace in 2021, with simply 35% of felony circumstances — 6,871 out of 19,602 crimes — ending in convictions final yr, state knowledge exhibits.
And people numbers have been means down from 2019, the final yr earlier than New York’s woke discovery reform legal guidelines took impact, when 64% of felonies resulted in convictions.
However a few of Bragg’s prosecution selections have sparked outrage, together with his preliminary resolution to cost Harlem bodega employee Jose Alba with homicide for fatally stabbing an ex-con who attacked him inside his retailer.
The DA finally dropped the case towards Alba following widespread outrage.
Final yr, straphanger Daniel Penny was additionally finally acquitted at trial within the chokehold demise of homeless man Jordan Neely aboard a Manhattan F prepare on Could 1, 2023.
Enoe famous the similarities between his case and Penny’s, who he mentioned was “standing up for the folks.”
“It’s form of comparable in a means, as a result of this man, he was on the prepare, harassing people who find themselves attempting to simply get to work and make a residing.”
